Talk:List of NHL franchise post-season droughts
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Ice Hockey, an attempt at building a useful ice hockey resource. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit the article attached to this page (see Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ for more information). |
| List | This article has been rated as list-Class on the quality scale. |
Is it really fair to call the Devils 2003 championship a "drought" considering they haven't defended it yet?
-- Decumanus | Talk 03:26, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Why are teams without a playoff appearance/finals appearance/cup win listed with the year after they joined the league? For example, why are St. Louis and Los Angeles' Stanley Cup droughts listed as a year shorter than that of the Leafs when all three teams have played the same number of seasons without a cup win? It seems to me that such teams should be listed with the years in which they joined the league. Please help me understand this. Aottley 19:19, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Guidelines (proposed)
After adding the drought lengths to the lists, I feel compelled to point out my rationale for doing so. So here's a few proposed guidelines for the content of this page.
- Drought lengths should be in seasons, not years - We've all heard the number 54 associated with the Rangers' Stanley Cup drought, but the drought was no more 54 years long than there was a one-year drought between the Penguins' cup wins in 1991 and 1992. The Rangers failed to win the cup in fifty-three consecutive seasons (1940-41 through 1992-93, inclusive), so 53 should be the number listed. Also, the missing 2004-05 season messes with calculation via dates as well.
- Season counts - The number listed is the number of seasons since their last success in which they have failed to repeat that success. For example, as of this writing, the Florida Panthers have missed the playoffs for the last 5 seasons, which is up to and including 2005-06. If they clinch a playoff spot in 2006-07, then their entry should be removed from the list. If they are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs in 2006-07, then the season count should be set to 6. Until either of those happen, don't touch the entry.
- Don't list droughts that don't even exist - i.e. The most recent (playoff teams/cup finalists/cup winner) should not be in the lists at all. This one sounds obvious, but today I removed the Oilers' "drought" of not having reached the finals since 2006 (As of this writing, the 2006 finals haven't even been played yet). Hopefully having the season counts there will make people think twice since they'd have to add "(0 seasons)" as well.
These are basically my opinions regarding what is a drought, what isn't, and how long they really are. They make 100% perfect sense to me, and the point behind posting them is to prevent misleading info from being added. If you have any opinions or ideas, by all means reply. Aottley 22:46, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Yea i have to disagree. It is commonly accepted to include the year a team finally breaks the drought.I would also point out that other league drought pages on wiki include that year. Ranger Fans count it as 54 years. Most people accept that the year they break the drought, counts. Ucscottb4u 18:31, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
- Look again. The NBA and NFL lists don't show the lengths, only the last appearances/wins for each team. And the MLB list agrees with me. For example, think about the famous drought of the Red Sox. What's the length colloquially given to it? Eighty-six years (they won in 1918, then not again until 2004). But the Red Sox entry in the longest World Series droughts in history list agrees with me, starting the drought in the first year in which the Red Sox lost (1919), ending it in the last year in which they lost (2003), and giving the length between those seasons, inclusive (85). Aottley 19:26, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I will not correct the page again its not worth it to go back and forth, however I have to say I still disagree. I only corrected the Rangers one, cause that was the only one i was certain was wrong. It still is wrong. I remeber watching game seven that year, As a Islander fan it was quite the painful night. I would also point out, that it was probably more then 54 years from when the rangers won in 1940, to when they won in 1994. and thats probably true with a lot drought lenghts (due the number of games increasing thus pushing the finals later in the year).Ucscottb4u 19:57, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with how this is worded. Why make it 10 times more confusing for every person that comes to this page without reading over the discussion page first? Just change it from seasons without a cup win to years between cups and it'll look much better. Just because you do this doesn't mean you have to list teams that won last year as in a year long drought ... 69.47.227.234 05:55, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
After spending waaaaay too much time and doing faaaaaaar too many edits on this page (and the sister page NHL post-season streaks), and researching every team's history, I definitely have some ideas regarding how best to 'measure' the concept of a post-season and Stanley Cup drought.
In trying to decide whether to use "years" or "seasons" as the metric, these complications arise :
- People (including the media) think in 'years' not seasons - This is only natural since it is easy to understand and even easier to calculate. For us Leafs fans, the thinking goes - "We last won the cup in '67, so that is 41 years of futility" (in 2008). Well, yes and no. While it is true that it has been 41 years, in actuality the Leafs have only been futile for 39 seasons during the interval between 1966-67 to 2006-07 (they haven't been mathematically eliminated as of today - yet). But who wants to take the time to explain it correctly - I do and I think the wikipedia page should also? (as an aside, I feel I must 'respect' the history of the "54" years that the NYR fans suffered so I have added a footnote to that drought to try to reconcile what is in the table and what is popularly referred to).
- The missing 2004-05 NHL Season - Ordinarily there is a symmetrical 1:1 correlation between the number of years and the number of seasons of a drought (provided it is calculated correctly). However, the strike season messed that ratio up forever. Now, all the calculations have to take into account whether the streak/drought spans the 2004-05 NHL season since nobody played that year and a team's streak/drought was suspended and doesn't count in the total. A drought of X number of seasons at end of the 2003-04 NHL season is the same number of seasons at the end of the 2004-05 NHL season whereas the number of years is X+1. Thus, using seasons makes more sense than years.
- The NHL season spans 2 years - Using my example of the Leafs, at the beginning of the 2007-08 season, the number of years would have been 40 years. But now it is early 2008, so the futility has been 41 years. Later on in the fall when the next 2008-09 NHL season will have begun, it will still be 41 years, but 4 months later, it will be 42 years. In other words, the use of "years" to measure a streak/drought is a moving target depending on when the observation is done. The use of measuring a drought/streak by "seasons" avoids this quirk of the NHL season spanning the year threshold and relies on the facts.
Therefore, for these reasons, in my humble opinion the streak/drought metric should be in seasons, not years. Eric Peebles (talk) 00:05, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
