It’s like you’re reaching for the last bottle of vintage wine just before closing, but six other hands are reaching for it along with you. From the best Rangers to date through Dallas, Carolina with Boston, Vancouver, Colorado to the seventh Florida. All of them can still grind their teeth on the “President”.
“We are mainly playing to start the playoffs at home. That is our main goal and then we also want to take our performances to a higher level, we need confidence for the knockout stage. And to do that, we’ll try to win the Presidents’ Trophy. It’s not every year you can say you have it,” Stars goaltender Jake Oettinger nodded.
The Texas team won the primacy in the regular season twice in 1998 and 1999, the only time they won the Stanley Cup. “If our performances result in us winning the Presidents’ Trophy, it will be fantastic. If not, but we keep playing well, I won’t mind either,” said Dallas coach Peter DeBoer.
But the Boston case from the 2022-23 season is still a little scary. The Bruins played excellently from October to mid-April. And anyway, they were bitten by Florida in the first round. When the Panthers reigned in 2022 after 82 games, they ended up playing in the second round for a change…
The last winner of the Presidents’ Trophy, who grabbed the Stanley Cup in the same year, is still Chicago 2013 in the lineup with Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, Marián Hossa, but also Michael Frolík and Michal Rozsíval.
Candidates for the Presidents’ Trophy
NY Rangers: 104 points/ 8 games to go (2015)
In parentheses is the year the club last won the trophy
“We don’t want to put unnecessary pressure on ourselves. The good thing is that even if we don’t play the best hockey, we win,” said Rick Tocchet, the coach of Vancouver, who is the most pleasant surprise of the season.
But the closest they have to winning the regular season are the Rangers, the only team with a scoring percentage above 70. “I wouldn’t go ahead yet,” said New York’s Peter Laviolette, a clear candidate for the Adams Trophy for the season’s best coach. “We have tough games ahead of us and at the same time we need to rest before the playoffs.”
The Presidents’ Trophy has been awarded in the NHL since 1986. Since then, 18 clubs have won it, most often Detroit (6x) and Boston (4x). The Bruins are among the hot candidates again this year. But their experience last year also leads other adepts to caution. The cup that everyone is fighting for is won not in April, but in June.
2024-04-01 17:08:48
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