For Stanley Cup contenders, the beefier the better

Building a contender at the NHL Trade Deadline isn’t as simple as checking off a shopping list of must-have ingredients for a Stanley Cup recipe.

But what if it was?

Over the past few years at Daily Faceoff, using the previous 10 NHL seasons as my case-study subjects, I searched for traits that were most common among Stanley Cup winners. I came up with seven, and voila, the Stanley Cup Ingredients series was born. It wasn’t as easy as identifying all the positive things you can do in a hockey game and saying, “Do those and you’ll win the Stanley Cup.” For instance: a strong power play might correlate to regular-season success, but it doesn’t to playoff success. It thus doesn’t make the cut in my recipe.

Today, we begin the third annual edition of Stanley Cup Ingredients, an eight-part series. The game, of course, is always evolving. Every year, the 10-season sample shifts by a year, and the correlations between specific traits and championships can strengthen or weaken.

First up, we look at team size. It’s about weight, not height. Heavy wins.

Stanley Cup Ingredient #1: Team Weight

The brand of hockey in the postseason is consistently tougher than that of the regular season. Teams built to withstand the physical grind, and the lack of penalties called compared to during the regular season, are more likely to go all the way. Last year, the Vegas Golden Knights were, surprise surprise, the heaviest team in the NHL, tipping the scales at an average of 205 pounds.

Using the team comparison data from Elite Prospects, here’s how the past 10 Stanley Cup winners ranked in their respective seasons in average player weight: