More often than not, you need a superstar scorer to win a Stanley Cup
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.
In part 1, we looked at team weight, which has a very strong correlation with success in recent seasons. Next up, we assess the importance of having elite scorers. Do you need one to go all the way? The Vegas Golden Knights didn’t last season. But were they an anomaly?
Stanley Cup Ingredient #2: Top-10 Scorer(s)
How many times have we said, upon a team’s elimination from the Stanley Cup playoffs, “They needed that game-breaker to put them on his back in overtime”?
While a champion needs defensive discipline and heart and goaltending, the object of the game is still to score more goals than the other team. It thus stands to reason that a Stanley Cup threat needs an elite scorer who can carry them in crucial moments: a Sidney Crosby, a Patrick Kane, a Nikita Kucherov. The 2022-23 Golden Knights, however, placed just one skater inside the top 75 in scoring in the regular season: Jack Eichel, who had 64 points in 66 games, good for 74th. It didn’t stop them from crusading to their first championship, knocking off three consecutive teams who owned at least one 100-point scorer in the Edmonton Oilers, Dallas Stars and Florida Panthers.
Vegas won on the back of tremendous scoring depth. But, historically, are you more likely to win the Cup if you have a marquee star who can take over games at will? Let’s examine how many of the past 10 champions had at least one top-10 regular season scorer in the NHL.
The parameters to define “Top 10 scorer”: (a) A player who finished top 10 in points during the year his team won the Stanley Cup or (b) A player who likely would have if not for injury, based on per-game scoring average, and returned in time for the playoffs. The latter are marked with asterisks.
| Season | Champion | Top-10 scorers |
| 2013-14 | Los Angeles | 0 |
| 2014-15 | Chicago | 1 (Kane*) |
| 2015-16 | Pittsburgh | 2 (Crosby, Malkin*) |
| 2016-17 | Pittsburgh | 2 (Crosby, Malkin*) |
| 2017-18 | Washington | 0 |
| 2018-19 | St. Louis | 0 |
| 2019-20 | Tampa Bay | 1 (Kucherov) |
| 2020-21 | Tampa Bay | 1 (Kucherov*) |
| 2021-22 | Colorado | 1 (MacKinnon*) |
| 2022-23 | Vegas | 0 |
Stanley Cup correlation: STRONG
Before Vegas bucked the trend last season, six of the previous eight Stanley Cup winners had at least one top-10 scorer. It was almost seven of eight, as Alex Ovechkin of the Capitals was 11th in 2017-18. So one year of Vegas’ success isn’t enough to signify a shift toward scoring by committee as the correct path to victory.
How does the NHL scoring leaderboard look in 2023-24 if we sort the list by points per game, with a minimum of 40 games played?
2023-24 scoring leaders, points per game (min. 40 GP)
1. Nathan MacKinnon, COL, 1.71
2. Connor McDavid, EDM, 1.69
3. Nikita Kucherov, TB, 1.67
4. David Pastrnak, BOS, 1.40
5. Artemi Panarin, NYR, 1.34
6. Mikko Rantanen, COL, 1.33
7. William Nylander, TOR, 1.31
8. Leon Draisaitl, EDM, 1.30
9. J.T. Miller, VAN, 1.29
10. Auston Matthews, TOR, 1.27
Not only does every player on the list compete for a playoff-bound team, but three contenders – the Avalanche, Oilers and Maple Leafs – have multiple players in the top 10.
The Golden Knights once again are on the outside looking in; their best per-game scorer is Eichel, who ranks 22nd at 1.09. Last season, I called out the Hurricanes for their lack of a game breaker. This year, their top per-game scorer is Sebastian Aho at 20th, but, notably, they added another member of the top 30 at the trade deadline in Jake Guentzel.
Conspicuously absent among the playoff hopefuls: the Winnipeg Jets, Detroit Red Wings and Los Angeles Kings, none of whom has a single point-per-game player this season.
Previous instalments of Stanley Cup Ingredients 2024
Next up: Top-10 goalies
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