Week 7: Can We Drop The Cup-Or-Bust Hockey Analysis?

The Jets continue to make history with every win. They’re the first team to win 14 of their first 15 games, and 15 of their first 16, and by the time this piece goes live, they may have extended their historic start even further. (Their next games are 11/14 @TB, 11/16 @FLA, and 11/19 vs. FLA). Not only have they been winning, but they’ve been winning convincingly.

I don’t think that there’s anything left to say about how good Hellebuyck has been. He’s been a huge factor in how we’ll they’ve played for so many reasons: most wins in the league by a LOT and we’re not even a quarter of the way into the season; top 5 save percentage; top five lowest GAA, both of those with more ice time than his closest competitors. It’s unreal the level that Connor is playing on, he’s the best in the world and it’s not even close. And his play has elevated the play of the team around him. The Jets have looked so comfortable on defense with the knowledge they have a brick wall behind them. Their team defense was widely panned as their biggest weakness in the preseason. The feeling was that if Hellebuyck didn’t have another Vezina-level season they wouldn’t be contenders. But here we are halfway through November, and they’ve allowed the second-fewest goals against (at the time of writing) in the entire league, second only behind the Dallas Stars, who have played two fewer games at this point than the Jets have. In goals against per game, Winnipeg leads the league comfortably. And this is all to say nothing about the offense on the team. The Jets have four lines of guys who can play hard and score goals, and there is no rest for opposing defenses. They are at worst a very sturdy and formidable offense, and at best, they rank in the elite echelons of scoring ability.

To the hockey media’s credit, I’ve heard a lot of apologies. Everyone’s on board with acknowledging that this Jets team is for real. It’s now far enough in the season that even if the wheels do come off down the stretch, they’ve built enough of a cushion that it would be really hard to miss the playoffs. Hell, it would be really hard to fall out of contention to win the Central. It’s no small feat that Winnipeg has already put so many points in the wins column that they’ve set themselves up for a comfortable playoff run, and everybody’s on board with granting them the kudos they deserve for that.

But lurking behind all of those conversations, and sometimes not even lurking but being expressed outright in conjunction with those conversations, is the sentiment that now it’s cup or bust.

In part, this makes sense after the disastrous post season display of last year. They were somewhat of a surprise to have finished where they did in the regular season, and that shakiness showed once they reached the ‘yoffs. Hellebuyck all but collapsed and their first round exit was — while certainly disappointing — not too far from what most people expected.

But that mindset sucks, dude. I’m using the Jets as my example here, but tell me you haven’t heard this same line of reasoning about the Rangers, or the Canes, or the Oilers, or the Stars, or the Preds — before they fell out of the cup picture. For so many teams every year, their regular season performance is completely and prematurely undermined by some notion that it doesn’t actually matter. But let me tell you as a Bruins fan, that is a very flimsy house of cards to build your commentary on.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Since writing the first half of this post, the Jets have gone 1-2 to fall to a still remarkable 16-3-0 overall record to open their first 19 games of the season. And on Friday they line up against the saggy Penguins, which should — barring some sort of catastrophe or miracle depending on the side you support — take them up to 34 points in in their first quarter season. That is outstanding stuff, and if you aren’t fired up to watch the Jets every night they take the ice, that’s on you at this point. And that should be true regardless of whatever happens in the spring. You should be psyched to watch the Jets every night now, and I think that’s what I’m trying to say.

The flimsy house of cards that I mentioned as a Bruins fan comes on the heels of the firing of Jim Montgomery, who will go down in history as being the coach of the most successful regular season in history only to lose in the first round of the playoffs. Unacceptable? Maybe! But they call it the President’s Curse for a reason. Name me another President’s Trophy winning team who’s taken the Cup in the last decade. Can’t think of one? It’s because there haven’t been any! The last President’s Trophy winner to go on to win the Stanley Cup was the 12/13 Blackhawks, who at the time also put up the best points percentage in history.

In a pretty firm consensus with the analysis I’ve heard and read so far, needless to say I think the move was perhaps not the right one, even if it may seem like it was the only one available. Monty was not the issue. Not in the slightest. The issue was that the Bruins spent the offseason building up a team to win the Stanley Cup when they forgot they had to play a regular season first to get there. 82 games taken for granted. And I think we all fell victim to the same mistake. Boston was widely touted as one of the favorites for the Cup, and despite a positively ghastly start to the season, they’re still only a point out of the playoff hunt. A cup run is fully still on the table, even if the product they’ve put out so far has been ugly.

But I think that the same process of taking the regular season for granted happened all over the league. For all the teams I mentioned above who aren’t playing the worst hockey they’ve played in over a decade, there’s no patience for appreciating the game of the regular season.

I can’t quite articulate why this feels like such a huge aspect of hockey commentary right now. I think a part of it is the nature of professional sports. The NHL and the franchises within it are businesses that need to make money. And the NHL — more than any other of the major North American sports — that comes through selling tickets to games. I think just under half of NHL total revenue comes from ticket sales. The best way to get butts in seats — and butts that paid a lot of money to get there — is for the team to play well, and for the team to play more games. A Cup run makes for months of extra sales at much higher prices, so financially, it does mean a lot to each franchise to put a team on the ice that has the best chance of going the distance. (Or at least a plan for how to get there in the next five years or so.)

But as far as the fans are concerned what’s up with being tired of the regular season already? I talk to my basketball-following friends, and it isn’t the same mindset at all. My friends who follow the Celtics were pumped to watch the game last night against the Cavaliers. The two best teams in the league going head to head in the first quarter of the season and they were talking about it like it was the playoffs. For me, I get a little thrill every morning that the Bruins are going to play because I know that I’ll get to watch my favorite team play a game. Doesn’t matter if they win or lose it’s exciting. But it feels like a lot of the analysts I hear talking about the regular season watch these games like they’re just filler until the good stuff that’s coming in a few months.

Maybe I’m just not talking to enough hockey fans, or I’m not talking to the right hockey fans, but it’s getting me down hearing so much about how we have a good sense of what the end of the season is going to look like now that we’re 20 games in. Hell, I don’t have a good idea of what tonight is going to look like. It’s the NHL! The Sharks might still make the playoffs for all we know. Anaheim could win the Cup. Bedard could pop off for 60 goals and take the Hawks deep into the playoffs. We have no idea! It’s a crazy sport and a crazy league and we probably have some good guesses at things, but the best way to find out is to keep watching how each game goes.

I think perhaps also there’s an increased pressure to stay up to date on the entire league. Access to information about every player and every team is so widespread now that since it feels possible to stay abreast of the whole league, I think a lot of us fans — myself certainly included — feel pressure to do so. And I think it dilutes our attention and our commitment to the night after night excitement of being a fan. At least I think I’ve recognized that in myself. It’s hard to stay tuned in to sixty minutes of a single game when you’re following the league at large. And it’s hard to take any one game seriously as being important or interesting when you’re trying to take a broader analysis of the entire season.

Who knows! I’d like to advocate though for anyone who has a team they support, to try this though: for one week, try to only follow our own team. Memorize their lineup for each of the games. Look at the stat sheet. Watch the games, maybe take a peek at the standings of just their division. But don’t watch highlights from around the league. Don’t peer into the story of whether the Leafs are really better without Matthews or how many games Ovi is going to be out for. Just be a fan. I’m going to try it, and I have high hopes for the results. Down with Cup or bust analysis, and let’s just enjoy watching hockey!