Why the Pens win should make Caps fans happy

by b.orr4 on Jun 15, 2009 1:32 PM EDT Comment 15 comments

In his Ted’s Take blog, Leonsis loudly declared that Pittsburgh’s Stanley Cup win meant nothing to the Caps. Maybe he was just trying to lessen the sting of the Pens victory, but, in reality, Pittsburgh’s win actually could mean a lot to the Caps and in a very positive way. The chart below shows all the Calder Cup Finalists for the last 18 seasons along with their NHL affiliation. If you examine the results, you’ll see that winning a Calder has no immediate impact on the parent club’s ability to make it to the Stanley Cup Finals the following year or two. However, there appears to be a decided correlation between making it to the Calder Cup finals AND making it to the Stanley Cup Finals 3-5 years later. Before I get into the specifics, a couple of caveats: 1) I’m not a statistician so I don’t know if the numbers I’m presenting have significance in a statistical fashion and 2) matching up the parent club in the early 90’s wasn’t easy. So if I made a mistake, I apologize.

Assuming that the parent clubs are accurate, here are some of the results I found interesting:

-While there doesn’t appear to be any carryover from making it to the Calder Cup finals to the Stanley Cup finals in the first two years, there is a definite uptick three to five years after a Calder Cup Finals appearance. The obvious implication is that it takes a few years for young players to make the transition from the AHL and become important contributors at the NHL level.

Specifically:

Detroit- Adirondack won the Calder in 1992. The Red Wings made the SC Finals in ’95 and won the Cup in ’97 (& ’98)
Washington- Portland won the Calder in 1994 and the Caps made the Finals in 1998
New Jersey- Albany won the Calder in 1995 (the same year the Devils won the Cup) and the Devils won the Cup in 2000
Buffalo- Rochester won in 1996 and the Sabres made it to the Finals in1998
Colorado- Hershey won the Calder in 1997 and the Avalanche won the Cup in 2001
Calgary- Saint John won in 2001 and the Flames made it to the Finals in 2004
Edmonton-Hamilton (which was getting players from both the Oilers and the Canadiens) made it to the Calder Cup Finals in 2003. Edmonton made it to the Finals in 2006
Pittsburgh- the Baby Penguins made it to the Finals in 2004 and, of course, the Pens made it to the Cup Finals in 2008 and won it in 2009.

If you discount the 1990-91 through 1992-93 Finals to give the parent club time to incorporate their minor league prospects into the NHL, that means that from 1993-94 to 2008-09 there have been 15 Stanley Cup Finals involving 30 teams. During that period, 10 of those teams that made the Finals have had their minor league affiliate involved in the Calder Cup Finals 3-5 years earlier. I’ll leave it to the stat wizards to tell me if a 33% ration is meaningful.

However, the number that I do find really interesting is that out of the last 15 Stanley Cups, 10 of them have involved a franchise whose minor league affiliate has played in the Calder Cup Finals within a three-five year window. That’s a 66% success ratio. As we all know, the Hershey Bears won the Calder in 2006 and were runner-ups in 2007. Based on the numbers, next year could be the season the Caps really reap the rewards of that ’06 Hershey squad that had guys like Steckel, Laich, Green and Gordon playing for it.

Season	Champion	Parent Club	Runner Up	Parent Club	Stanley Cup
2008-09	Hershey Bears	WAS	Manitoba Moose	VANCOUVER	PITT(Det)
2007-08	Chicago Wolves	ATL	W-B/Scranton Penguins	PITTSBURGH	DET(Pitt)
2006-07	Hamilton Bulldogs	MONTREAL	Hershey Bears	WASHINGTON	ANA(Ott)
2005-06	Hershey Bears	WASH	Milwaukee Admirals	NASHVILLE	CAR(Edm)
2004-05	Philadelphia Phantoms	PHIL	Chicago Wolves	FL/ATL	NONE
2003-04	Milwaukee Admirals	NASHVILLE	W-B/Scranton Penguins	PITTSBURGH	TB(Cal)
2002-03	Houston Aeros	MINNESOTA	Hamilton Bulldogs	MON/EDM	NJ(Ana)
2001-02	Chicago Wolves	ATLANTA	Bridgeport Sound Tigers	NY ISLANDERS	DET(Car)
2000-01	Saint John Flames	CALGARY	W-B/Scranton Penguins	PITTSBURGH	COL(NJ)
1999-2000	Hartford Wolf Pack	NY RANGERS	Rochester Americans	BUFFALO	NJ(Dal)
1998-99	Providence Bruins	BOSTON	Rochester Americans	BUFFALO	DAL(Buf)
1997-98	Philadelphia Phantoms	PHIL	Saint John Flames	CALGARY	DET(Was)
1996-97	Hershey Bears	COLORADO	Hamilton Bulldogs	EDMONTON	DET(Phil)
1995-96	Rochester Americans	BUFFALO	Portland Pirates	WASHINGTON	COL(Fla)
1994-95	Albany River Rats	NEW JERSEY	Fredericton Canadiens	MONTREAL	NJ(Det)
1993-94	Portland Pirates	WASHINGTON	Moncton Hawks	WINNIPEG	NYR(Van)
1992-93	Cape Breton Oilers	EDMONTON	Rochester Americans	BUFFALO	MON(la)
1991-92	Adirondack Red Wings	DETROIT	St. John's Maple Leafs	TORONTO	PITT(Chi)
1990-91	Springfield Indians	NY ISLANDERS	Rochester Americans	BUFFALO	PITT(Min)

If this FanPost is written by someone other than one of the blog's authors, the opinions expressed in it do not necessarily reflect those of this blog or SB Nation.

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Nice work man, hopefully the Wolves are the exception.

by Bald Pollack on Jun 15, 2009 1:38 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

The Wolves are a strange franchise.

Every AHL franchise is technically “independent” of its NHL parent, but the Wolves are much more independent than most. They don’t take much direction from the Atlanta front office (can you blame them?), and their roster is usually heavy on veteran AHL players like Jason Krog and Alex Giroux (both former Wolves), and light on the prospects. The prospects that manage to stick around don’t usually get much playing time.

I’d almost go so far as to simply throw them out of the sample, because they don’t operate much like a standard AHL franchise such as the Bears.

by D'ohboy on Jun 15, 2009 4:57 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Wow. That’s seriously interesting stuff. I hadn’t thought of it that way.

"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees." - Delores Ibarruri

by gotsparkly on Jun 15, 2009 2:01 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I had been wondering about this very thing

Thanks for doing the analysis, I was curious whether there was any correlation.

by CapitalCentre on Jun 15, 2009 2:22 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Poor Minny.

by DrinkingPartner on Jun 15, 2009 4:12 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

So I assume the point of this is that the players that helped get their teams to the Calder come up and help their teams win Lord Stanley. Well the Bears that won the 05-06 Calder that have played in a Caps uniform and will play more next season are: Fehr, Gordon, Fleischmann, Steckel, Laich, Sloan, Bourque. Are these guys going to take us to the Cup? Probably not… Then again, I could only recognize 2 Baby Pens who won the Calder in 03-04 that won Stanley this year: Orpik and Scuderi. Does that mean we are in better shape than the Pens? Maybe…. or maybe this doesnt mean as much as we originally thought. Nice work though, Orr

by amkcaps on Jun 16, 2009 12:31 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Or maybe you’re not giving those guys enough credit :)

"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees." - Delores Ibarruri

by gotsparkly on Jun 16, 2009 8:12 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Haha, fair enough

by amkcaps on Jun 16, 2009 9:33 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Well the Bears that won the 05-06 Calder that have played in a Caps uniform and will play more next season are: Fehr, Gordon, Fleischmann, Steckel, Laich, Sloan, Bourque.

And, as noted, Green and Schultz (I’ll let the "Sloan playing more next season" part slide…).

Japers' Rink: Hockey blogging from the most powerful city in the world

by J.P. on Jun 16, 2009 10:47 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

see below…. and yeah, I just made a generalization about Sloan. Like your recent post said, Bourque might not even be back. But those are the guys that will get time next year

by amkcaps on Jun 16, 2009 11:20 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Don’t forget Green and Schultz…

by Yoshietree on Jun 16, 2009 7:53 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I thought so too, but I guess not
http://www.hersheybears.com/team/index.php

by amkcaps on Jun 16, 2009 9:31 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

IIRC, they played the year the bears were the runner-up, which is included in the point of this post:

a franchise whose minor league affiliate has played in the Calder Cup Finals

by Scott in Shaw on Jun 16, 2009 10:28 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Actually, Green was a major contributor to the ’06 Cup Championship playing 21 games. Schultz played in 7 playoff games in ’06 and 19 in ’07. Bourque only played one playoff game in ’06 but had 19 playoff games in ’07.

by b.orr4 on Jun 16, 2009 3:33 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

That, too :-)

by Scott in Shaw on Jun 16, 2009 5:00 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

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