Can you win a Stanley Cup without a player who has done it before?

Matt Larkin
Matt Larkin(MLarkinHockey)
Can you win a Stanley Cup without a player who has done it before?

Building a contender at the NHL Trade Deadline isn’t as simple as checking off a shopping list of must-have ingredients for a Stanley Cup recipe.

But what if it was?

Over the past few years at Daily Faceoff, using the previous 10 NHL seasons as my case-study subjects, I developed a list of traits that were most common among the Stanley Cup winners. I came up with seven. And voila, the Stanley Cup ingredients series was born.

So far, we’ve explored the correlation factor of average team weight, having at least one top-10 scorer, having a top-10 goaltender, exhibiting strong analytics and having an elite penalty kill. Next up, we explore the lords of the rings. How crucial is it to have previous Stanley Cup winning experience on your team? Can you win a championship without someone in the dressing room who knows what it takes to do so?

Stanley Cup Ingredient #6: Stanley Cup Rings

In previous instalments of the Ingredients series, the correlation between Cup rings and, um, more Cups was strong. That was obvious when it came to repeat champions like the 2016-17 Pittsburgh Penguins and 2020-21 Tampa Bay Lightning and for teams that won multiple times in a short period, like the Chicago Blackhawks and Los Angeles Kings in the first half of the 2010s. When a team full of champs barely turns over, it has a clear experience edge over the field because it’s full of players who understand the sacrifices necessary to win. But even the one-offs or first-time winners in recent seasons always had at least one guy with a ring – and the 2022-23 Golden Knights did not buck that trend.

SeasonChampionStanley Cup rings
2013-14Los Angeles16
2014-15Chicago16
2015-16Pittsburgh6
2016-17Pittsburgh18
2017-18Washington1
2018-19St. Louis1
2019-20Tampa Bay1
2020-21Tampa Bay18
2021-22Colorado2
2022-23Vegas6

Stanley Cup correlation: ABSOLUTE

For a team with no championships, Vegas was loaded with championship pedigree last year. Blueliner Alex Pietrangelo had already captained a Cup winner in St. Louis, and left winger Ivan Barbashev was his teammate on that 2018-19 team. Defenseman Alec Martinez had won two Cups as an L.A. King and even had a championship-clinching overtime goal on his resume. Center Chandler Stephenson had a ring from the 2017-18 Capitals. And even two guys who didn’t suit up for any 2023 Golden Knights playoff games were around with plenty of wisdom to offer as multi-Cup winners: right winger Phil Kessel and goaltender Jonathan Quick. Both guys got their names engraved on the Cup last year, by the way.

It’s rare for teams without prior championships to have so much winning pedigree, but that’s what makes Vegas’ management so unique. Kelly McCrimmon simply goes out and plugs every inconceivable hole, even the intangible kind. While Vegas was an extreme example, it is common for every Stanley Cup winner to have someone in the room with a ring, even if it’s a single player. The correlation here is as strong as it gets. The research suggests you simply don’t win a Cup nowadays without a prior winner on the roster. Does that make the Stanley Cup ring the most important ingredient in the recipe?

Armed with the understanding of the ring’s power, let’s peruse the 2023-24 NHL field and identify which teams lack a single Stanley Cup winner at the moment.

2023-24 NHL teams without a Stanley Cup winning player

Columbus Blue Jackets

End of list.

The Blue Jackets are an embarrassment at the moment, completely devoid of winning culture, so no one would expect them to have a winner on their roster. But last year, when I did this exercise, we had six teams without a Cup winner. Now we have one? Maybe GMs are smartening up. A few weeks ago, one other franchise would’ve qualified for the no-Cups list: the Toronto Maple Leafs. But GM Brad Treliving acquired a previous winner in Joel Edmundson on March 7. He’s a depth addition, sure, but the “Cup winner” rule isn’t exclusive to superstars. The 2017-18 Capitals only had bruising blueliner Brooks Orpik. On the 2018-19 Blues, it was only Oskar Sundqvist. The 2019-20 Lightning only had Patrick Maroon. Even a single winning voice in the room seems to be enough.

Previous instalments of Stanley Cup Ingredients 2024

Team Weight
Top-10 Scorer(s)
Top-10 Goaltender
Expected Goal Differential
Penalty Killing Efficiency

Next up: Trade Deadline Deals

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