Over the past few months, we’ve been wondering where the Rangers will get that elite talent that supposedly going to launch the club into Cup contender status. It’s an interesting question, primarily because it touches heavily on small sample sizes, which is inherent in playoff hockey. Sure, if everything were stretched out for say, 82 games, the better team would win. That’s not the point though – you need to be able to sit in the pressure cooker for a maximum of seven games and make it through to the other side victorious.

So all discussions of what makes a Cup-winning team that special blend are just going to be a bit inconclusive. We simply can’t know for sure, because even though we’ve been doing this for 100 years we haven’t – not with the salary cap, the current influx of talent from around the world, modern training and equipment, and so on.

Which brings us to the here and now. Usually teams that win the Cup have that special talent, an Alex Ovechkin, a Sidney Crosby (and a Malkin, a Kessel, and so on): at least one elite player and a supporting cast that’s also very good. But we draw conclusions year after year about what is and isn’t quite necessary.

That changes the game just a little bit, demonstrating how nebulous the Cup concoction, or at least what we think we can say it is, really comes out to be. Recall for a moment the first time the Penguins won the Cup in their repeat. The story was one of their defense, or lack thereof. They basically had Justin Schultz as their top-pairing guy, but it didn’t really matter, because their offense was stacked. Fast forward to this year, and well, that didn’t quite cut it.

The Kings, in their runs, played “hard hockey” and look at them now – it turns out a lot of their success was driven by Jonathan Quick playing out of his mind (2012), and Marian Gaborik scoring seemingly at will (2014). It’s hard to pin down what does the trick, and of course it’s all a team effort at the end of the day.

Couple that with the fact that teams that do have crazy stacked rosters don’t always make it just out of kind of coincidence, or small sample size, or whatever you want to call it. The Lightning this past campaign are an excellent example here. Imagine for a moment that they do acquire Erik Karlsson and still can’t get over the hump. What would that tell us? Probably not a lot actually, or at least not enough to say for certain what really happened outside of “they lost the games they needed to win”.

And then there’s the runners up, of which our dearest Blueshirts are a great example. The Rangers were scoring by committee and Hank was playing out of his mind. But the defense was simply not good enough. Unless of course we won some of those close games, got some calls, and eventually came away with the Cup. Then it would’ve been fine as it happens, because cognitive bias is a hell of a drug.

Same thing with the Sharks of recent vintage, or this year’s Cinderella story, the Vegas Golden Knights. Imagine the latter team won, and completed a story-book tale for the ages. Would we have learned anything in particular? Would the various conclusions even be consistent from pundit to pundit? It’s hard to say, but I’m inclined to believe the answer is no. It’s just tough is all.

All of this brings us to the original question: Do you absolute need crazy elite talent to win the Cup?

Based on some teams that win, yes. Based on some teams that came close and might’ve won it in a slightly different world, not quite. Based on some teams that haven’t even made it out of the first or second round (looking at you, every Caps team except this past year’s, which was probably one of the weaker ones all things considered), it doesn’t mean jack. So this notion that the Rangers absolutely need someone like Artemi Panarin seems to me a little bit bunk.

But that’s a story for another day.

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