Is the Victory Cup Cursed?

[Renomitsu 930]

This one was inspired by idle curiosity. A few people had mentioned in the last few weeks that the Victory Cup (or maybe the #1 seed in general) is cursed, i.e. those that win it generally can't win the title. And looking at the last few seasons' worth of Victory Cup winners (Moscow, Calgary, Moscow, Warsaw from S74-77), you might think that's true, provided literally none of them ended up taking home the title.

 

But in going through a bit of history, I'd found that 33 of the 77 seasons' Victory Cup winners actually won the Continental Cup. And that's pretty surprising, provided that (especially in recent history) we've had so few cases. But the quantity of teams and users in the VHL have fluctuated significantly over the last, let's say, thirty seasons - with the low point happening in the S50s and clearer highs in the mid-late 60s and early 70s. The first true expansion (not a renaming of Vasteras/Madrid/Stockholm) occurred in Season 31 with the Quebec City Meute (now the Vancouver Wolves) and Cologne Express as the league went from 8 to 10 teams. But after considerable loss of its user base through the 50s, the VHL contracted both Vasteras (now Stockholm) and Cologne to drop to its original 8 (albeit with slightly different composition).

 

Moscow entered the league as the ninth and Malmo as the tenth in the mid-60s, yet another expansion happened in S68 with DC and Prague, and the league capitulated to massive growth one last time in Season 73 with four teams (Warsaw, Los Angeles, London, and Phoenix Chicago). And with the league quite literally doubling in size over the course of a dozen seasons but still not able to keep up with its growth, the VHLE was announced just this past season.

 

So maybe it shouldn't be surprising that, especially with the expansion of the playoffs from 4 to 5 teams per conference in S73. After all, the playoffs were composed of just 5 teams until Malmo was added to the league in Season 66. It went from 6 to 8 teams with the addition of Prague and DC, and then to 10 with the addition of the four S73 teams. So I looked at the percentages for each "era" - though admittedly S65-68's turnaround was incredibly short for what amounted to three expansions.

 

S1-30 (8 teams, 4 playoff) - 16/30 (53.3%)

S31-57 (10 teams, 6 playoff) - 11/27 (40.7%)

S58-65 (8 teams, 5 playoff) - 3/8 (37.5%)

S66-68 (9-10 teams, 6-8 playoff) - 1/3 (33.0%)

S69 (nice)-S72 (12 teams) - 1/4 (25.0%)

S73-present (16 teams, 10 playoff) - 1/5 (20.0%)

 

Ultimately, the more recent seasons do seem to suffer from a small sample size, as some don't even get a full 5 seasons to pan out. Regardless, the league has seen a gradual trend downwards in its Victory/Continental Cup concurrence. There is a bit of a curious drop in S58-65, where there's a contraction of the playoffs from 6 to 5, but note here that the league also contracted by two teams and talent may have been unevenly distributed favoring top teams (i.e. the Victory Cup winner's greatest competition) because of the era. Teams have also gradually gotten more chances to be weeded out, particularly with the shift to 8 team playoffs, where the Victory Cup winner needs to play three opponents instead of 2. It's very well-demonstrated with the expansions to an 8 team playoff in the late 60s (we're 3/12 or 25.0% since).

 

[This VHL.com article is also being claimed for the uncapped TPE package, #4 of 5.]