DALLAS — Dustin Brown laughed on the query, on the very concept of it, on the chance {that a} reporter may have such a restricted understanding of the sport of hockey, of the character of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Through the 2014 Western Convention last, the Los Angeles captain — who was within the midst of taking part in 64 further video games in a 26-month span — was requested why his Kings have been so spectacular within the postseason, however so unusual within the common season. In spite of everything, they have been the No. 8 seed within the West in 2012, the No. 5 seed in 2013, the No. 6 seed in 2014. Hardly dominant. And but they received the Stanley Cup in 2012, reached the convention last in 2013, and have been on their approach to one other championship in 2014. They have been a workforce of wrecking balls, taking part in the heaviest model of hockey we’ve seen within the salary-cap period. The Kings didn’t simply beat you, they beat you up. They beat you down. They beat you right into a pulp.
So why weren’t they profitable their division yearly? Why weren’t they contending for the Presidents’ Trophy?
“You may’t play this manner for 82 video games,” Brown mentioned. “You’d by no means survive. It’s important to save this for the playoffs. We’re a playoff workforce, not a regular-season workforce.”
Full disclosure: I used to be the reporter asking the query. Hey, typically it’s important to sacrifice your dignity for an excellent reply. That very same postseason, I posed an analogous query to Chicago’s Bryan Bickell, who was a perennial disappointment within the common season and a perennial monster within the playoffs. He gave mainly the identical reply: If he performed like that for 82 video games, he’d don’t have anything left when the video games really counted.
Within the fall of 2015, following the Blackhawks’ Kings-like run of Cup, convention last, Cup, I requested Marián Hossa throughout coaching camp if he ever confirmed up for the beginning of a season and thought to himself, “I can’t consider I’ve to undergo all this once more.” He chuckled.
“It’s a protracted, lengthy season,” he mentioned. “At this stage of my profession, I sort of want I may simply skip forward to the playoffs.”
He was hardly alone.
There comes a degree in each nice workforce’s trajectory at which they’re hit with the career-altering realization that, nicely, the common season doesn’t imply squat. The Presidents’ Trophy is nugatory. Seeding is meaningless. Residence-ice benefit just isn’t a giant deal. All that issues is the playoffs — getting there and getting there as wholesome as you probably can. And sure, typically which means coasting for lengthy stretches of video games. Of weeks. Of months, even. Generally which means some half-hearted efforts in opposition to lesser groups. Generally which means shedding streaks and standings drops.
It might probably ship followers right into a panic or a rage, with torches and pitchforks at all times on the prepared. However that panic by no means reaches the locker room. Not the locker room of a workforce that’s been there, achieved that.
Look, I’m not right here to say the Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers don’t care in regards to the common season. That’s too glib, too harsh. However there’s a purpose the Panthers by no means blinked after they went 7-10-1 over the ultimate month of the season, shedding seven of their final 10 video games and plummeting from first within the Atlantic Division and second within the Jap Convention to 3rd within the Atlantic (10 factors behind Toronto) and fifth within the East. Or after they misplaced six of seven in November, for that matter. Florida at all times knew that when the temperature rose, its degree would, too. Positive sufficient, they’ve an opportunity to repeat as Stanley Cup champions after shedding simply 5 video games in three rounds.
Similar with Edmonton. Oilers Nation was gritting its enamel over a two-month run from Jan. 30 to March 27 that noticed its workforce go September 11-2, falling from first within the Pacific and second within the West to 3rd within the Pacific and sixth within the West. The preseason favourite to win all of it — almost half of The Athletic staffers picked Edmonton to win the Cup in our preseason predictions — regarded like something however a contender. However the Oilers met all of it with a shrug. They knew that come April, come the video games that mattered, they’d what it took — on the ice and between the ears — to make one other run to the Stanley Cup Final. And right here they’re, again within the Last in opposition to those self same Panthers, after an intensive dismantling of the Dallas Stars. They’ve received 12 of their final 14 in these playoffs.
On the finish of the common season, precisely one staffer at The Athletic nonetheless picked Edmonton to win all of it. And one staffer picked Florida. That’s it. We must always have recognized higher. The Oilers and Panthers did.
The actual fact is, to an important workforce, dwelling ice is sweet. However it’s not a should.
“The common season is a protracted, psychological grind,” Oilers ahead Adam Henrique mentioned. “Possibly much more so than bodily typically. And when groups are of their window to win, they’re taking part in quite a lot of hockey 12 months after 12 months after 12 months. Whenever you’re in that window, individuals at all times count on to see (you) on the high of the regular-season standings after which run by way of the playoffs. However that doesn’t occur as a lot anymore. Sometimes, the Presidents’ Trophy winner doesn’t win the Stanley Cup. It’s simply having an understanding, with the ability to have a mature group that may go on the street and simply handle enterprise, figuring out what it’s important to do to be able to win — that claims lots a few workforce. It’s not do or die simply to have dwelling ice all through the playoffs.”
Henrique went to the Stanley Cup Last as a rookie with the New Jersey Devils in 2012, taking part in 24 further video games and getting a way of how completely different — how a lot tougher, how far more bodily, how far more exhausting — playoff hockey was. When he got here again a few months later for coaching camp, he couldn’t consider how “mentally drained” he nonetheless was. Health testing? Eight preseason video games? Eighty-two regular-season video games? Simply to get again to the begin of a doubtlessly two-month playoff run? Actually?
And that was simply his second season. Now think about {that a} decade into your profession.
“I really feel nice,” Connor McDavid countered. “It’s a blessing to play this a lot hockey over the past couple of years.”
OK, yeah, nicely, futuristic, state-of-the-art hockey Terminators don’t depend on this dialogue.
“You need to be ok with your recreation down the stretch going into the playoffs, for certain,” Henrique mentioned. “However you wish to be wholesome, and that takes precedence in the event you’re in an excellent place to permit your self to take these further days or video games off. There’s lots that goes into it, relatively than simply attempting to be the No. 1 seed.”
Followers hate to listen to about groups “flipping the swap” come the postseason. It feels disrespectful someway, to the sport, to these shopping for tickets to all these regular-season video games. However the nice groups — the examined groups — actually do flip the swap. Fairly simply, actually. It’s what separates them from the pack. You may have a look at the Stars and say that they misplaced within the convention last for the third straight spring. Or you possibly can have a look at them and say they received two playoff collection in every of the final three years. That’s nonetheless fairly a feat. And one which appeared like a protracted shot after they limped into the 2025 postseason having misplaced seven straight video games in dreadful trend. Stars followers have been borderline despondent, anticipating Colorado to steamroll their workforce.
Dallas wasn’t sweating any of it, although. Dallas knew higher.
“What occurred with us is, we had a pair actually bizarre, robust losses towards the top, after which we received too far-off from Winnipeg (within the battle for first place),” Matt Duchene mentioned. “It was unrealistic that we may catch them. And also you go right into a lull, proper? You’re in purgatory. Colorado wasn’t going to catch us and we weren’t going to catch Winnipeg. That’s why we had the droop we had close to the top. However I received requested about it earlier than Recreation 1 in opposition to Colorado, and I sloughed it off, and we performed a reasonably good recreation that night time. After which we received the subsequent two and we’re off to the races. Now we have a veteran group in right here. You don’t wish to put your self ready to need to flip the swap, however typically possibly it’s important to.”
It helps when you realize you possibly can. Whenever you’ve achieved it earlier than, again and again. Solely a handful of groups are adequate for lengthy sufficient to succeed in that time.
In all of the years I’ve been overlaying the NHL, I consider one participant remark greater than another. It got here from Patrick Sharp, the longtime Blackhawks nice, when he was with the Dallas Stars towards the top of his profession. Lips get looser as soon as you permit a workforce, particularly as you close to the top of your profession, and I had requested Sharp point-blank if these nice Blackhawks groups cared even the slightest bit in regards to the common season. I had spent all these years ginning up issues a few disjointed energy play, or a gap at second-line middle, or a possible goaltending controversy. And all of the whereas, I received the sense that it was simply me and the followers going by way of all of the histrionics. These Blackhawks not often, if ever, appeared to get caught up in any of it.
And so I am going again to Sharp’s reply regularly, even after I’m questioning what I’m doing spending 4 hours on a flight and two nights in a resort simply to observe some finally meaningless regular-season recreation in San Jose.
“Whenever you’re within the playoffs, you might have a job to do and you place all the things else apart and also you give attention to that job,” Sharp mentioned. “You’re not likely caught up in what number of video games we’ve performed or how drained we could also be. However you’re feeling it in coaching camp the subsequent 12 months. You are feeling it in these ‘huge’ regular-season video games in October, November, December, January that actually aren’t that huge. Yeah, the Blackhawks go into Washington to play the Capitals in January, that’s a ‘huge recreation.’ However it’s actually not a giant recreation once you have been simply within the Stanley Cup Last a pair months in the past. It was tougher for guys to rise up for the day-to-day grind of the common season after we have been going deep within the playoffs like that. Possibly that’s why you noticed the slumps in February and March.
“I don’t assume ‘cruise management’ is even the appropriate approach to put it. You continue to wish to play, and also you wish to rating, and also you wish to win, nevertheless it’s nearly like, holy s—, we’re actually doing this once more? Right here? Wednesday night time in Carolina? And the opposite workforce is fired up, as a result of the Blackhawks are on the town. They’re taking part in their greatest and so they wish to beat you. It’s simply robust to do it each night time.”
It’s a lesson value remembering subsequent season, when the Panthers or Oilers or Stars or Hurricanes or Lightning or Golden Knights undergo a dry January or a feeble February. They haven’t all received the Cup, however all of them know what it takes. And most significantly, when it takes it. For the league’s really elite groups, it’s only a matter of getting in. Prime seed or sixth seed, dwelling ice or no dwelling ice, pink scorching coming in or ice chilly, it simply doesn’t matter. They know the place the swap is, and you may be rattling certain they’ll discover it.
The common season is for the Maple Leafs of the world, the Jets, the Senators, the Kings, the Capitals and the Flames — all nonetheless attempting to show they are often a kind of elite groups — and for all of the also-rans looking for their method again into the postseason. Allow them to expend all that vitality and all that emotion. The really nice groups know to reserve it for when it issues most. For the playoffs. For proper now.
(Photograph of Oilers’ Adam Henrique and Stuart Skinner: Steph Chambers / Getty Photographs)
