tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6518202653898886981.post6046992366451109682..comments2024-03-27T23:29:08.366-04:00Comments on Down Goes Brown: Explaining the Vegas Golden KnightsDown Goes Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10150805735008417848noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6518202653898886981.post-74505263257059396322018-05-23T05:45:14.768-04:002018-05-23T05:45:14.768-04:00My explanation: Sometimes bad teams have good seas...My explanation: Sometimes bad teams have good seasons. In fact, every season sees at least one team vastly outperform expectations before crashing back to Earth (the Senators are the most recent example).<br /><br />What's different about Vegas is that we can't pretend/forget that they're not supposed to be good. Conventional wisdom says that there's no such thing as a bad team that succeeds (or a good team that fails). But now people are forced to either concede that sometimes bad teams can succeed, or else Vegas is truly a good team and nobody knows anything about hockey.<br /><br />Vegas' success has overshadowed another bizarre event: Colorado made the playoffs. They finished dead-last by a mile, lost their star player for future assets, and got significantly better. That's almost as ridiculous as the Vegas situation. It's a regular occurrence for teams to jump up and down the standings between seasons without any significant roster changes. Theoretically, that shouldn't be possible, but it is because sometimes teams overperform or underperform and it's virtually impossible to predict which teams will do which. <br /><br />If Vegas wins the Stanley Cup, fine then, a bad team will win the Stanley Cup. It wouldn't be the first time (Carolina, 2006). Does that cheapen the Stanley Cup? Maybe, but that's the price of parity. David Churkohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15487233987173403800noreply@blogger.com