Ok, so I had a few week sabbatical from my weekly post here on Sundays, as I thought how I could better use this time than posting old youtube clips of videos that were already talked about. We are still going to see the War Room from time to time, controversial goals, hits, and plays. But to fill the void when there isn’t anything coming from the War Room in Toronto – I bring a new Segment, called Games and Theory.
Your going to get a two pronged approach here. A walk down memory lane when it comes to “hockey” video games; and your going to get some well, maybe controversial posts on how I think the game should be rewound in order to keep with history and traditions – and make the game better.
This offseason I did a three part series over on Sabrenoise.com about realignment and expansion. If you missed it, here are Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 for you to check out.
So my first theory to throw out there with training camps on the horizon is the value of the Stanley Cup. Now this might stem from a little bitterness that my Buffalo Sabres have never won a Stanley Cup – but I think the argument carries a lot of weight.
I guess my focus here is really on teams that have won the Stanley Cup a sickening number of times, the Montreal Canadiens (24), The Toronto Maple Leafs (11) and the Detroit Red Wings (11).
Now before I get into this, I should qualify my future statements in this article by saying I realize how tough it is to win the Stanley Cup – so I am not trying to make light of the feat at all.
I think we can take Detroit out of the argument here for the fact of the matter that they won several Cups in the post expansion era, so they really defeat the purpose of my argument. What leaves me is the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs.
I love how these two franchises have the history and traditions, but I am tired of hearing about how they have sooooo many Stanley Cups and some teams don’t have any. Lets break them down.
Until 1967 when the NHL expanded for the first time, you only had to beat out five other teams to raise the most storied trophy (well at the time it was still kind of new) in sports history. Thats 14 of the Montreal Canadiens 24 Cups – and technically because of their roots in French Canada, they had dibs on the best French-Canadien player, so they almost had a shoe in player on their team every year.
It accounts for all of the Toronto Maple Leafs championships. (So yes it does irk me when Buffalo comes to town and all the Leafs fans try and stuff it in our face after we beat them that at least they have a Stanley Cup).
Neither franchise has won a Stanley Cup since the league hit 30 teams.
So the question is this – how much value should each Stanley Cup hold? I know it will never be valued that way – but the thought did occur to me….should it?
Carolina, Tampa Bay, Anaheim, and Dallas all have only one Stanley Cup – but they had to beat out a lot more teams than the Original Six franchise, who all boast multiple Cups. Whose mean more?
I guess ultimately it doesn’t come down to devaluing an older win, or making a newer win seem like more – but it does prove that expansion seriously waters down a championship with so much history. How many other cities would boast that many Champions had they been around before 1967….and would Montreal have had such great luck at winning it without the ace card of grabbing that best French Canadian player?
Thanks for reading and remember, its all in fun and theory; because thats my job around here.
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