NHL Playoffs: teams who must win the Cup

Maybe someday we’ll have some meaningful time together. | Getty Images

Whenever the Islanders miss the postseason (which is a lot), on one level I’m able to enjoy the spectacle and intensity of the Stanley Cup playoffs in a different way, free of the exhausting emotional investment and baggage that comes with talking yourself into how they might go far while watching them ultimately get eliminated. Watching the playoffs without a rooting interest is like getting to watch the melodrama of Real Housewives of Whatever Shithole Plastic Surgery County instead of actually living it because you married poorly.

However, a postseason without the Islanders is not completely free of emotional investment. I’m never truly free until every team I hate is safely eliminated. This year, that’s a little easier since several franchises I loathe did not qualify.

But there are still teams to pull for, or root against. This post is mostly an excuse to ask the readership: Who are you pulling for in these playoffs? — so please let us know in comments, and feel free to skip the Player Haters Ball listing that follows, knowing that I just have to get it off my chest.

The Teams That Must Not Win (and won’t anyway)

Philadelphia Flyers

The Flyers made the playoffs?!? This really is humiliating. True, the Flyers’ Cup drought is even longer than…every other non-Leafs team that has ever won the Cup, but still…no.

Pittsburgh Penguins

They’ll never admit it, but the 1980s Penguins with Mario Lemieux were essentially seen the same way the 2009-12 Islanders with John Tavares were: “Oh, man, it’s such a shame that they’re so terrible and wasting his career for six seasons and counting.” In order to win a couple of Cups — but only two, because Al Arbour > Scotty Bowman, teehee — the Penguins needed to miss the playoffs for seven out of eight years, luck into Jaromir Jagr instead of Scott Scissons, and inadvertently fleece the Whalers in a John Cullen-for-Ron Francis swap because they sought Ulf Samuelsson’s dirtiness toughness.

So they have done virtually nothing brilliant as a franchise, other than luck into a shit-ton of great players in between lengthy tanks.

They did it all again a decade later when they tanked-and-bankrupted into Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby (lockout lottery fix), Marc-Andre Fleury and Kris Letang. (Sorry Ryan Whitney, you insufferable windbag, you didn’t, and still do not, count.) There is nothing honorable about this franchise nor what it has “earned*” and no one outside of a very specific Pittsburgh-area subset should root for them.

*I use that term loosely, in the Chris Pronger AI book sense.

There appears to be some attempt at rallying behind the Penguins as Crosby’s Last Ride or something, but there is nothing feel-good in that. Crosby has had plenty of rides. Let someone else have something.

Los Angeles Kings

This team has 22 regulation wins. That’s seven fewer than the Islanders, who also were 10-0 in OT and do not deserve a postseason berth.

Simply, the Kings have zero business being here. The only possible reason they should win the Cup would be so the league finally trashes this stupid three-points-or-maybe-two-points, every-game-needs-a-winner, 3-on-3/shootout stupidity. But the Kings won’t, and even then the league surely wouldn’t.

Montreal Canadiens

The other tragedy of the Nordiques-Avalanche relocation is that French Canada lost its only potential check on Canadiens’ arrogance. After the Islanders dynasty unseated the final Canadiens one in 1980, this once-storied franchise somehow lucked into two more Cups by the grace of Patrick Roy. But as karmic penance, they are now cursed to never ever win a Cup since the Nordiques left Quebec.

Amusingly, their annoying fans probably think they would’ve won the pandemic Cup if only the Islanders had slipped by the Lightning, but they are wrong.

Also, remember when Martin St. Louis was so wounded by his Lightning GM not picking him for the Olympic team that he demanded a trade to the Rangers? Yeah, f- that guy.

Edmonton Oilers

Well well well, if it isn’t dynasty interruptus! It’s not our problem that the Oilers could never string more than two Cups in a row, keeping them from entering the Habs/Islanders dynasty echelon without an asterisk. I’m not sorry that Steve Smith scored an essential own goal off Grant Fuhr’s leg. And I’m not sorry that this franchise has yet to win another Cup despite Connor McDavid and their trio of first-overall picks in the Taylor Hall sequence.

Most of all, it’s important that McDavid not win a Cup in Edmonton so he can play in a 4 Nations or Olympics or World Cup or whatever with Matthew Schaefer in a couple years and decide he needs to join that kid on Long Island.

Vegas Golden Knights

No, just no.

Teams That Could Win and It’d Be…Okay

Dallas Stars

I’ve no feelings for this franchise or most of its players, but GM Jim Nill is a longtime hockey good guy who’s done everything right since taking over the Stars. Untimely injuries, self-inflicted coaching implosions — he’s navigated them all but each year there’s something that keeps them from the top.

They are starting to remind me of the 1980s Washington Capitals, a quietly really good team for several years that was always right up there yet always running into a stronger force like the Islanders, Flyers or Bruins.

The Stars seem to keep encountering that like the…

Colorado Avalanche

The Colorado Avalanche have Brock Nelson, and that’s not nothing. He made an understandable decision that any of us would’ve made pre-Matthew Schaefer: Pretty sure my best Cup chance for the rest of my 30s is not on Long Island. If he’s able to lift the Cup it will be a spiritual boon for all of the Snow-era Islanders, except for any that he might’ve agitated to insanity=, which is not likely but definitely possible.

That said…the Avalanche is a spoiled franchise born of absolute privilege and timing. Before every college grad wanted to move there for the weed, Denver was a sleepy enough town that complaining about transplants wasn’t a daily topic. Sports-wise, before they built a giant airport that is basically as far as the Moon from downtown, they had the Broncos, a laughingstock basketball team, and a baseball team that stole its name from the defunct NHL team because when would they be big enough to get hockey again?

Alas, the mid-’90s Canadian small markets were a rocky place, where hockey revenue’s seed could find no purchase. So just as the Nordiques and their league-best uniforms finally got good after years of last-place finishes, their team became unaffordable, and Denver swooped in. They were almost named the Rocky Mountain Express.

The Avalanche have had plenty of fortune and deserve no sympathy nor rooting interest. But they have Brock Nelson, so if they win and he lifts the Cup, I will smile.

Carolina Hurricanes

Kinda like the Stars, the Hurricanes are always banging on the door, but rather than running into a juggernaut, they usually shoot themselves in the foot. Whatever, I’m indifferent.

Tampa Bay Lightning

I don’t think it would be okay if they won, but I’m resigned to them being perennially good in their John Cooper, Kuherov and Vasilevskiy era, so it’s not a big deal if they add another Cup, I guess.

Minnesota Wild

The Wild probably can’t get through the tough draw they have with the Central stalwarts of Dallas and Colorado, but if they did Bill Guerin would be hailed as the new face of NHL genius and all that.

They are exciting, and the franchise has never won, and the North Stars never won, so it wouldn’t be terrible if they somehow did it.

Teams That Are Also There

Utah Mammoth

It’s Utah, they have amazing national parks and nice skiing when there’s snow. They did us the favor of getting themselves a name (and not “Utah HC”) before they entered the postseason. There’s not much else to say about this team, but they did rescue the Coyotes and they somehow went the entire season without a shootout, so they are doing Bossy’s work here.

It would be funny if they went all the way, but of course they won’t.

Anaheim (Mighty) Ducks (of)

They overdid it on the orange, they have the dirty Little Ball of Hate as their GM and a “rehabilitated” Joel Quenneville as coach. But they have some fun young talent who Q might someday teach to play defense, too. There could be some high-octane offensive fun in their series with the Oilers before they’re eliminated.

Boston Bruins

Credit to them for not being terrible when everyone figured they’d be plummeting and tanking. But in addition to being inherently unlikeable, they’re also playing the Buffalo Sabres, who are a feel-good story. So if Boston knocks off the Sabres, everyone will hate them even more.

Ottawa Senators

The Senators have become really irritating as they’ve taken on Brady Tkachuk’s “Master of Hockey Cliches and Pantomime” personality. Not much to like in that way, but they’re coached by our beloved ol’ Gutless Puke Travis Green, whose middle name is Vernon according to Wikipedia.

Don’t want them to go far, and they shouldn’t with Carolina as their first-round draw. But anytime the Senators do well it’s fun for its effect on Leafs fans.

Universal Bandwagon Favorite

Buffalo Sabres

You have to really hate Buffalo or someone involved with them to not pull for the Sabres or their fans. They suffered so, so SO long. We’ve been waiting for years for their rebuild to finally turn a corner, and just when it looked like it was never going to happen, they flipped the switch midseason, coinciding with a change at GM a little after their turnaround began.

What a miraculous legend it would be if this team rode their turnaround all the way to the Cup.

Ah, but they will fall short, of course — Buffalo can’t have nice things — so it’s just a matter of learning if they get to have some fun first, or if the end will be particularly and classically cruel in the fashion of so many Buffalo sports stories.

But while they’re still alive, they have my full support.

Elsewhere

• New Jersey boy-turned-analytics-guru Sunny Mehta gets the Devils GM job. [NHL]
• In Vancouver, Jim Rutherford (or ownership, or whoever) fired his puppet, but he says the new GM will make all the hockey decisions. [Sportsnet]
• 32 Thoughts: On Connor Hellebuyck and the Jets, and also candidates for the Leafs job (Ryan Bowness of the Islanders is one of many mentioned). [Sportsnet]
• With the franchise at six years of tanking and counting, Connor Bedard says the Blackhawks need to finally start playing for something. [NHL]