Is the Victory Cup cursed?

[solas 1,951]

At the end of the season, Chicago was able to clinch the Victory Cup by the narrowest of margins: a tiebreaker over Warsaw who also had 98 points, as well as a one-point lead over Seattle, the second-place team in North America. There was a bit of chat in the Chicago LR about the Victory Cup (maybe) being cursed, so I wanted to take a look at some of the recent Victory Cup winners to see whether or not they could successfully follow up on their win in the playoffs.

 

S77 - The Warsaw Predators won their first Victory Cup last season, but ended up falling in the conference finals to Helsinki. Unsuccessful.
S76 - The Moscow Menace won the Victory Cup in dramatic fashion with a league-leading 112 points, the best since the Toronto Legion of S67. It didn’t help them in the playoffs, though, as they lost to Warsaw over seven games in the conference finals. Unsuccessful.
S75 - Calgary made history in this season with their 11th Victory Cup, tying Toronto for the most by any VHL franchise. This was followed up, however, by a shocking loss to the underdog Chicago Phoenix in the conference semifinals. Unsuccessful.
S74 - Another one for Moscow, and this time they lose in the conference semifinals to Helsinki in five games. Unsuccessful.
S73 - Seattle wins the Victory Cup, and this time it matches up with playoff success as they go all the way, beating Helsinki in six games in the finals. Successful!

 

Since this is just a VHL.com (albeit a long one), I figured it was best to just go back until I found a team that managed to win both the Victory Cup and the Continental Cup in one season. As you can tell, Seattle did that in S73. For other recent examples, Moscow also did it in S70, as did Helsinki in S66, Riga in S63, and Calgary in S62. So is the Victory Cup cursed? No, at least I don’t think so. It’s easy to think that because the best regular season team wins the Victory Cup, then they should be winning the Continental Cup almost every season. But I’d argue that the playoffs and the regular season are two different beasts - the regular season rewards success over a long, extended period of time, whereas the playoffs can be a bit more varying based on the whims of the sim engine. It’s not necessarily true that the Victory Cup winners “should” win the Continental Cup, although I can definitely understand that it’s frustrating when it doesn’t happen (trust me, it’s happened to me). Compare that to real life - not many teams have won the Presidents’ Trophy and the Stanley Cup in the same season. So it’s not a curse, but just two different measurements of success.

[dlamb 1,326]

This got me thinking...

 

NHL = 8/34 (23.5%)

VHL = 33/77 (42.8%)

 

however, if we put the sample size down to the past 34 seasons, like the NHL, it goes down to 13/34 (38.2%).

 

 

[Renomitsu 934]

 

This may interest you!

[a_Ferk 766]

I am 1/1 on victory cups and regular cup so far