The annual pursuit of Lord Stanley’s Cup is a quest undertaken by 16 teams, all of whom enter the second act of the NHL season with the belief they will hoist the cup come June. And they have every right to think that, because come playoff time, anything can happen.only four teams since 1997 won both the Presidents’ Trophy (awarded to the team with the most points in the regular season) and the Stanley Cup. Further showing that the best team in the regular season is not always the most likely to hoist the cup. In other Sports like the NBA playoffs this clearly isn't the case (see the Spurs, Heat, Lakers and Celtics) over the last decade for examples. Well, that's only one other sport, maybe it's just a coincidence? Just 7 Major League Baseball franchises won the Fall Classic since 2003.
The Underdog. A perfect example happened just a few years ago when the 2012 Los Angeles Kings snuck into the playoffs during the final weekend of the season. The Kings became giant killers, taking out the top three seeds in the Western Conference while only losing just two games. It was the first time that an eight seed had beaten the top three seeds in the conference to advance to the Stanley Cup Finals. Los Angeles completed the improbable run by beating the New Jersey Devils in six games to capture their first-ever Stanley Cup.
The unpredictability is not the only reason for watching the NHL Playoffs. VERY FEW COMMERCIALS!!! If I didn't just hook you right there then you're clearly not an avid sports watcher. If you’re like me, and the rest of this generation for that matter, then you definitely have some degree of ADD or ADHD (or whatever new name they’ve come up with now to describe it). In the NHL teams are only allowed one 30-second time out per game. Not per period, per game. In an NFL game, you receive on average, 11 minutes of live action. For a 3-hour game, you watch 11 minutes of actual play, that's ludicrous.
