lake@alberta.UUCP (Robert Lake) (05/22/85)
*** DO NOT FLAME THIS ARTICLE *** For the past several weeks Rick, I've been studying your articles and predictions and I think I understand the theory behind your reasoning. Allow me to enlighten others: Premise 1: Playoff experience is essential to winning the Cup. Premise 2: The team with the most playoff experience wins the Cup. Premise 3: The Islanders have more playoff experience than any other team. Premise 4: Officiating occasionally disrupts the natural outcome of a game. Therefore, the Islanders will always win the Cup, except when Premise 4 adversely affects them in one of their series. This theory certainly seems to explain every Stanley Cup won for at least the past 5 years, and what happened to the Islanders this year. Now I can predict, with a high degree of confidence, the Stanley Cup champion for 1986. But before I do, I was wondering - is there any premise in this theory that I have overlooked? Age? Skill? Biorhythms? Horoscopes?
jeff@dciem.UUCP (Jeff Richardson) (05/24/85)
It seems logical that playoff experience should help a team's chances in
the playoffs, but judging by what's happened in the last several years,
I'd say that in general, it doesn't seem to help. The Oilers seem to be
the only team that showed a significant improvement as they got more
playoff experience. The best indication is to look at the defeated
finalists in each of the last 5 or 6 years. Generally, these are the
teams that have gained a lot of playoff experience.
Last years defeated finalists, the Islanders, already had about as much
playoff experience as everybody else put together, but it didn't get them
very far this year. The year before, it was the Oilers, who seemed to
benefit greatly from the experience, but the Islanders two previous victims,
the Canucks and the North Stars, have gone rapidly downhill since then.
Before that the Flyers lost in the finals, but after that until this year,
they always made an early exit from the playoffs even though they had
excellent regular season records. I can't remember the teams the Canadiens
beat in the late 70's, but I know one (possibly the last one) was the
Rangers, whose only accomplishments since then have been a couple of upsets
over the Flyers. Even after the Canadiens' four Stanley Cups, they were
eliminated early from the playoffs by inexperienced and supposedly inferior
teams from Edmonton and Quebec.
Almost all of those teams looked good on paper, and with their playoff
experience, everybody figured they would be back in contention the next year,
but it didn't happen. So if history repeats itself, the Flyers shouldn't
expect to have a better chance next year, because their playoff experience
probably won't help them.
--
Jeff Richardson, DCIEM, Toronto (416) 635-2073
{linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd}!utcsri!dciem!jeff
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!dciem!jeff