Presidents' Trophy
The Presidents' Trophy is an award presented by the National Hockey League to the team that finishes with the best record during the regular season. The Presidents' Trophy has been awarded 37 times to 18 different teams since its inception during the 1985–86 NHL season.
The trophy winner is guaranteed home-ice advantage for the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, but winning the award does not assure playoff success, as only eight winners have gone on to win the Stanley Cup; three Presidents' Trophy winners have been defeated in the Stanley Cup Final. However, the team winning the trophy has won the Cup more than any other playoff seed. The most recent team to win both the trophy and the Stanley Cup in the same season is the 2012–13 Chicago Blackhawks; the only team to accomplish this feat more than once is the Detroit Red Wings.
History
The Trophy was introduced at the start of the by the League's Board of Governors to recognize the best team in the regular season, informally known as the regular season championship. Before this, the team that finished in first place when the regular season concluded was allowed to hang a banner reading "NHL League Champions."A total of 18 teams have won the Presidents' Trophy. The Detroit Red Wings have won six Presidents' Trophies, the most of any team. The Boston Bruins and New York Rangers are tied for second with four. The Colorado Avalanche and Washington Capitals are tied for third with three. Five teams are tied for fourth most with two Presidents' Trophy wins apiece. Among these multiple winners, Calgary, Dallas, Detroit, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Washington have won it in consecutive seasons; only Detroit did it consecutively twice. Out of these teams, Edmonton, Calgary, and Dallas have captured a Stanley Cup, along with their second straight Presidents' Trophy.
If there are two or more teams tied for first in points in the League, then the NHL's standard tiebreaking procedure is applied, with the first tiebreaker being the team with the most regulation wins. During the shortened, both the Colorado Avalanche and Vegas Golden Knights finished tied for first with 82 points in 56 games, with Colorado winning the trophy since they had 35 regulation wins while Vegas had 30. From the through seasons, the first tiebreaker was most regulation and overtime wins. Before 2010, the first tiebreaker was the most wins, including both overtime and shootout wins. The most notable of the pre-2010–11 protocol is from the, where both the Buffalo Sabres and Detroit Red Wings finished tied first with 113 points, with the Sabres winning the Trophy since they had 53 wins, three more than Detroit, who had 50.
Past trophies
From 1937 to 1967, the same criterion now observed for winning the Presidents' Trophy was used to award the Prince of Wales Trophy. With the modern era expansion in the and the creation of the West Division, the Wales Trophy was awarded to the team that finished in first place in the East Division during the regular season. However, no trophy was awarded to the team that finished with the best overall record in the entire League during this period, and no trophy at all was awarded based on the results of the regular season from the through seasons. A cash bonus of $350,000 was awarded to the winning team with the NHL's best regular season record during these years, to which the Presidents' Trophy was added in. The cash bonus is split amongst the players on the active roster of the winning team.Factoring all NHL seasons prior to the introduction of the Presidents' Trophy, the Montreal Canadiens have finished first overall 21 times, the most times in League history. Detroit is second with 18 first-overall finishes.
Playoff implications
The Presidents' Trophy winner is normally guaranteed home-ice advantage throughout the Stanley Cup playoffs. This does not necessarily correlate to success in the playoffs, however. The Trophy has been awarded 37 times, but only eight of the winners have gone on to win the Stanley Cup in their respective years, leading to a popular superstition that the Trophy may be cursed. In addition, eight Presidents' Trophy winners have been eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, with first-round upsets being common in the NHL compared to other major professional sports. Since the salary cap era of the NHL from 2005–06 onwards the first-placed NHL team has had the lowest probability of winning the playoff championship, compared to the other three North American major professional sports leagues.NHL broadcaster Darren Eliot attributes the apparent lack of playoff success to the different style of competition compared to the regular season: instead of playing different teams every night, the goal is to advance through four best-of-seven playoff series. The Presidents' Trophy winner may have to go through other playoff clubs who might have a hotter goaltender, a better defensive team or other players that pose match-up problems. If the regular season champion's primary success was merely outscoring others, they may be out of luck facing goaltenders that can shut them out. The lack of playoff experience may have been to blame in the examples of the 1999–2000 St. Louis Blues and 2008–09 San Jose Sharks, as neither team had advanced past the second round for five or more seasons. Teams have often given up pursuit of finishing first in the League in order to avoid injuries and rest key players for the postseason.
Ian Cooper, writing for the Toronto Star, noted that "of 11 Presidents' Trophy winners to lose in the first two rounds, seven came from divisions that were among the league's weaker half... If a team dominates a weak division, its shortcomings should become apparent once it faces stiffer competition from the rest of the conference". Jonathan Weiss, writing for the Bleacher Report in 2010, also noted that of the teams between 1982 and 2009 that led the League in points during the regular season, 12 of them reached the Cup Finals, while of the other 405 teams during that same time period, only 42 advanced to the final round, concluding that "the team that leads the NHL in regular season points is four to five times more likely than any other team in the playoffs to make it into the Stanley Cup finals, and seven to eight times more likely to win the Cup".
The 1995–96 Red Wings were considered a "cursed" team, as their record-setting season was cut short by the newly relocated Colorado Avalanche in the Conference Finals, sparking a particularly vicious rivalry between the two teams in subsequent seasons. In the 1996–97 season, the Avalanche were the defending Cup champions and won the Presidents' Trophy but lost the Conference Finals which was a rematch against the Red Wings, the Red Wings went on to win the Cup. The Red Wings would go onto the defeat the Presidents' Trophy-winning Dallas Stars in 1998, en route to the Red Wings' second straight Cup win. Thereafter, in three of four seasons, the Presidents' Trophy winning team went on to win the Stanley Cup.
Since the Blackhawks won the Presidents' Trophy and Stanley Cup in the lockout-shortened 2012–13 season, the "curse" has been more pronounced. The 2018–19 Tampa Bay Lightning were swept in the first round by the Wild Card Columbus Blue Jackets after a dominant season in which they tied the 1995–96 [Detroit Red Wings season|1995–96 Detroit Red Wings]' record for regular season wins, becoming the first Presidents' Trophy winner to suffer this fate. Adding to the ignominy was the Blue Jackets' previous lack of postseason success, as their sweep of the Lightning was their first playoff series victory in franchise history, with only four previous playoff qualifications. By contrast, the Lightning had made several deep playoff runs in the previous seasons. Over the next three years, the Lightning did not win the Presidents' Trophy but nevertheless won two consecutive Stanley Cups while reaching a third consecutive Stanley Cup Final. For the 2022–23 Boston Bruins; after setting new records for single-season wins and points, they proceeded to lose in the first round in seven games to the Florida Panthers after having led the series three games to one. The Panthers were incidentally the previous season's Presidents' Trophy winners, where their 2021–22 season ended when they were swept in the second round by the Lightning.
Only four times in the history of the Presidents' Trophy has a team missed the playoffs the season after winning the award: the New York Rangers did it twice, who won the Trophy in the season and missed the playoffs in, however, they did it again when they won the Trophy in the season and missed the playoffs in ; the Buffalo Sabres, who won the Trophy in the season and missed the playoffs in, the Boston Bruins, who won the Trophy in the season and missed the playoffs in despite having a winning record.
Winners
Bold Team with the most points ever accumulated in a season during the trophy's existence.Earlier best records
For reference, the following are teams that finished with the best records in the NHL for each season between and.NHL vs. PCHA/WCHL/WHL Stanley Cup era (1917–1926)
Prior to 1926–27, the Stanley Cup was then awarded as a "World Series" trophy between the champions of the NHL and a rival league. Instead, the NHL championship trophy during this era was the O'Brien Trophy.From 1917–18 to, the NHL season was split, requiring separate standings, with a single playoff series between the winner of the first half of the season and the winner of the second half of the season.
| Year | Winner | Points | Playoff result |
| Toronto Hockey Club | 26 | NHL champions, won Stanley Cup† | |
| Ottawa Senators | 24 | Lost NHL championship ^ | |
| Ottawa Senators | 38 | NHL champions, won Stanley Cup† | |
| Toronto St. Patricks | 30 | Lost NHL championship ^ | |
| Ottawa Senators | 30 | Lost NHL championship ^ | |
| Ottawa Senators | 29 | NHL champions, won Stanley Cup† | |
| Ottawa Senators | 32 | Lost NHL championship ^ | |
| Hamilton Tigers | 39 | Suspended from playoffs | |
| Ottawa Senators | 52 | Lost NHL final round ^ |
NHL takes control of the Stanley Cup (since 1927)
After the 1925–26 season, the NHL became the only league left competing for the Stanley Cup. The Stanley Cup thus became the de facto NHL championship trophy, though the league did not take formal control of the trophy until 1947.The Prince of Wales Trophy was awarded from to for the entire league regular season. In the 59 season span from the 1926-27 season to the 1984-85 season, 37 regular season champions reached the Stanley Cup Final and 30 won the Finals.
Records
Combined pre-trophy/trophy era best records
- Defunct teams in italics.