I thought this was kind of interesting to ponder
I was thinking about teams that squandered Cup windows without winning, and decided to go through and see the best examples.
I looked at who were the top five regular season teams in each five-season span (e.g. 1999-2000 to 2003-04), noted who won the Cup and who didn't: pic.twitter.com/mAw1yPft6B
— JFresh (@JFreshHockey) April 2, 2024
by kookforaday
2 Comments
I suspect that the reason the 07 team isn’t top 5 is because they had a pretty short window of being elite.
The teams in the 2000s never being top-five isn’t that surprising when you think about it. There’s never a five year stretch that doesn’t include a year where they missed the playoffs and even when they did 3 of the 5 Ducks teams from that decade that made the playoffs weren’t even top 10 in points and even in 2007 they only finished fourth(or tied for third) in points in the regular season. Just a much better team come playoff time.
The 2010s teams also almost certainly have more of 2012 and 2019 were only mildly bad, they barely miss on both. And they’re not just top five but number one from 2013-2017 and 2014-2018. Not quite the opposite as the decade prior but definitely very different.