Want to Win? Wear Black. Or Red. Or not Blue.

Stop me if you've heard this before:

(I'll continue because I know you haven't heard this before because you don't read my blog. How did you get here?)

Blue Teams Don't Win.


Glossary: 

Blue Teams: NHL clubs whose uniforms are predominantly blue.

Win: Win the Stanley Cup

Don't: They don't do it.

"Hey, wait a minute," you say. "That collage of jubilant neck-beards doesn't include anything before 1995. Which was right after the Rangers won. Which was right after the Oilers and Islanders won a whole bunch. Which was only a couple of decades after the Maple Leafs won. You're cherry-picking your data!".

Never mind. Apparently, their jerseys were grey.

Okay, I concede, it's not that blue teams CAN'T win. They just don't. At least, not anymore. Probably because you can't have teams loaded with superstars like you could back when there were only six teams and no salary cap. 

As soon as the Original Six era ended, blue teams went on a 12-year Stanley Cup drought. Then the Islanders got a bunch of superstars and won a bunch of Stanley Cups. Then the Oilers got a larger bunch of better superstars and won a larger bunch of Stanley Cups. Then the Rangers stole a bunch of their superstars, added some superstars of their own, and (barely) defeated a ragtag group of misfits to end a 54-year drought. 

Pictured: The Canucks top defenseman that year. Again, the Rangers almost lost with Messier, Leetch, Graves, and Richter.

But that was the end of the Blue era. The next teams to load-up on superstars would be the Red Wings and the Avalanche (and the Stars, to a lesser extent). Then the Devils said, "hey, you know how nobody plays defense because it's boring and would completely ruin the entertainment aspect of the sport? Let's not care." So they stopped caring, started playing defense, and they won the Stanley Cup a few times as well.

Then NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said: "No more loading-up on superstars or playing defense."

"Screw you." Replied everyone else, especially the rich teams.

Nobody won the Stanley Cup that year (2005) because Gary Bettman cancelled it.

"Okay fine." said everyone else. Since then (2006), teams have only been allowed to spend up to a certain amount on player salaries. This means that teams can only afford a certain number of superstars. So from then on, even the best team was only a little better than every other team. Teams still played defense, but the players weren't allowed to give each other concussions anymore.

But then a weird thing happened. Even though there were no more dominant teams, blue teams kept losing. This was especially weird because there were a lot of them. Of the 30 teams, an average of 11 of them wore blue each season. A blue team winning the Stanley Cup should have been as likely as you winning a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors.

Twelve years later, and the red/black streak still hasn't ended. That's less-likely than you playing twelve rounds of Rock-Paper-Scissors and not winning once. And has that ever happened to you?!

Because I'm a nerd, I actually calculated how unlikely it is that you would see a streak of 22-consecutive fails in a string of 90 iterations with a 33% chance of success. 316:1.

So then "Why?", I ask, stroking my beard, sipping my latte, in a philosophical affectation.

Oh look, here are a bunch of scientific studies that you aren't going to read, but you may click on only to verify that, yes, they are a bunch of scientific studies and not just pop-science junk.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23917700
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02640410701736244
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/stop-on-red-a-monkey-study-suggests-that-the-effects-of-color-lie-deep-in-evolution.html#.WUIZUGgrJ1s
https://news.dartmouth.edu/news/2011/09/dartmouth-researcher-finds-monkeys-leery-color-red
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/6097954/Why-teams-in-red-win-more.html

Okay, that last one was pop-science junk. But since you didn't read them anyway, I'll sum them up:

Wear Red = Win

When you control for athleticism and skill, red and black teams are at a psychological advantage over blue teams. And since the induction of the salary cap, athleticism and skill are being controlled for.

So if you're the manager of an NHL team and you don't want to be at a psychological disadvantage, call a marketing meeting and change your team colours. 

The Problem with the Hart Trophy

Welcome to my bi-annual blog entry – where I share my thoughts when I have a problem with the NHL that nobody else is talking about.

You know what problem nobody seems to be talking about? The fact that there isn’t a clear consensus on who’s supposed to be awarded the Hart Memorial Trophy.

Photocred: usatoday.com

The Hart is easily the most prestigious trophy among those awarded to individual players. And each year members of the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association vote on who wins it. But before we get into the criteria, let’s differentiate between two important concepts: (1) Player of the Year, and (2) Most Valuable Player.

Player of the Year: The best overall player. If you could return to the beginning of the season, and sign any player to a one-year-contract, knowing in advance how he would perform, and money was not an issue, who would you sign? That player is, in your opinion, the Player of the Year.

Most Valuable Player (MVP): The player most responsible for his team’s success. Which team would have been that much worse-off without a specific player’s presence this past season? That specific player is, in your opinion, the MVP.

Is Connor McDavid the best player in the NHL yet? Maybe not, but the Oilers are substantially better with him than without him. Drew Doughty is arguably a better defenseman than Erik Karlsson, but Karlsson pushes the Senators further up the standings than Doughty does the Kings. Sergei Bobrovsky may not be the best goalie in the NHL, but where would the Blue Jackets be without him?

McDavid, Karlsson, and Bobrovsky are therefore, in my humble opinion, candidates for MVP, even if they’re not quite Player of the Year calibre.

So to which of the two, MVP or Player of the Year, is the Hart Trophy awarded?

Patrick Kane, last year’s winner of the Hart, was easily the best player in the NHL, winning the scoring title by a mile. But was he the most valuable to his team? I believe that the Chicago Blackhawks would’ve been just fine, permitted that they retained the services of Jonathan Toews, Marian Hossa, and Duncan Keith. So from an MVP perspective, Kane should not have won.

But on the other hand, Jose Theodore, who won the Hart in 2002, was not the best player in the NHL. However, the Montreal Canadiens would have been substantially worse-off had it not been for his outstanding play. So from an MVP perspective, he was the correct winner.

Evidently the Hart Trophy itself can’t decide whether it’s awarded to the Player of the Year or MVP.

So then which should it be: Player of the Year or MVP?

MVP seems to have a fairly airtight case as it’s written right there in the trophy’s definition: “[The Hart Trophy] is awarded annually to the "player judged most valuable to his team" in the National Hockey League”.

But that presents a problem. If the Hart Trophy is for the MVP, then what about the Player of the Year? Isn’t it a greater accomplishment to be the best player in the NHL? Is it fair that Patrick Kane misses out on the top individual award because he happens to have talented teammates? It isn’t Kane’s fault that he plays for a great organization, so why should he lose votes to a lesser player on an otherwise-crap team?

The letter of the trophy may say MVP. But the spirit of the trophy suggests Player of the Year. And those who vote seem to differ as to which they subscribe. I’m reluctant to suggest adding new trophies, but hey, if the Oscars can honor both Best Picture and Best Director (the winner of one tends to be the runner-up in the other), then maybe the NHL should add a Player of the Year to compliment the MVP.