There was a mighty curse on the Blackhawks this year. No, not the one that they got from being from the same city as the Cubs, and not the much-hyped “Hossa Curse” (Marian Hossa has been to the Cup Finals three times in three years on three different teams… and only now has a Cup to show for it). It was the Curse of the Sharks – the 16 year long streak where any team matched up with the Sharks was doomed to fall short of the Cup.

Twelve times the Sharks had made the playoffs, and twelve times they or their opponents did not lift the Stanley Cup. It started with their miracle run of 1994, where they upset the Cup-favorite Wings in 7 games only to face the Maple Leafs (no, really!) and fall in 7 games (once again, really!). They then fell to the Vancouver Canucks in 5 games in the Western Conference Finals, and thus, a curse was born.

The teams that have fallen victim, in order: Toronto Maple Leafs (94), Detroit Red Wings (95), Dallas Stars (98), Colorado Avalanche (99), Dallas Stars (00), St. Louis Blues (01), Colorado Avalanche (02), Calgary Flames(04), Edmonton Oilers (06), Detroit Red Wings (07), Dallas Stars (08), and Anaheim Ducks (09). And yes, Sharks fans do not like the Dallas Stars or the Detroit Red Wings. We do, however, take solace in the fact that once they beat us, they won’t win the Cup. Or did.

What does this mean? Well, it means that the 6 or so hours I put into researching and writing this initial explanation of the Curse, and this examination of whether any other team had something similar happen to their opponents (SPOILER! it hasn’t) was all for naught. It could also, potentially, mean that the San Jose Sharks themselves will get over that darned playoff hump and finally bring a championship back to the Bay Area. We need one. I mean, when teams like the Golden State Warriors and Oakland Raiders have had the most recent post-season success after the Sharks, you know that it’s bad.

So, congrats to Chicago for flipping off all the curses and jinxes in the world, planning parades and painting Cup murals and acquiring Hossa, and winning the Cup. I may kind of hate your team, but the Cup is quite an accomplishment. Just, why oh why did Patrick freaking Kane have to score the overtime winner? Are you trying to kill me?

I’ve posted stuff for the Miracle on Ice in the past – here is an essay I wrote for a college app once upon a time that examined the political and social implications of the game, here are wallpapers that I posted yesterday, and here are two banners from way back when.

What makes this anniversary so great and prominent, besides the fact that it’s the 30th, is because of an event that happened last night. It was a big event unto itself, no matter what the outcome: the Canada and USA men’s hockey teams were battling it out in the Olympics. Not in a medal game or an elimination round, but just the preliminaries that serve only to establish seeding. Basically, a meaningless game. But Canada was expected to win, and win big – and they didn’t. The US pulled out a 5-3 win on the back of two Brian Rafalski goals and some stellar Ryan Miller goaltending.

That was the celebration after an empty-net goal. No, seriously.

Second-most viewed hockey game in the US since the Miracle on Ice, and second only to the US-Canada gold medal game back in 2002. Pretty impressive, considering it was on MSNBC, which a lot of people don’t even get. Something like 30% of Canada watched it.

But really, this post wasn’t meant to be about last night’s game. As Brian Burke said (and I’m paraphrasing here), “You don’t win any medals from being first in the preliminaries.” Next Sunday is the gold medal game. It is only possible for one of Canada, Russia, and Sweden (the three favorites going into the Olympics) to play in it. This is going to be fun.

Logos for the past and present teams of the NHL - gotta catch 'em all!

A month ago, I posted my explanation of the “Curse of the Shark Tank” [link]. In the comments, Tomi wondered if any other team had a record similar to the Sharks, and that made me wonder as well – were there? Since I had a little time today (and I want to refrain from commenting on the free agency period until everything has been sorted out for the Sharks), I decided to go to the internet and investigate this query.

Immediately, you can throw out any team that has been to the Stanley Cup Finals and lost, which leaves only eight teams in the modern-day NHL (i.e. the current thirty teams): Atlanta Thrashers, Colorado Avalanche, Columbus Blue Jackets, Minnesota Wild, Nashville Predators, Phoenix Coyotes, San Jose Sharks, and the Tampa Bay Lightning. As this is a comparison to the Sharks, they can be thrown out as the baseline, leaving seven teams.

On an interesting note, both the Colorado Avalanche and the Tampa Bay Lightning have made it to the Stanley Cup Finals, but every time they have made it they won the Cup.

Anyways, of those seven, two teams have only made the playoffs once – the Atlanta Thrashers and the Columbus Blue Jackets (coincidentially, both were swept in their sole appearances). Both of them lost to a team that did NOT go on to win the Cup – the New York Rangers and the Detroit Red Wings, respectively – and so their potential for having the curse is still there. However, since they only made the playoffs once, neither of them qualify.

Now for the teams that made the playoffs more than once.

The Colorado Avalanche have made the playoffs a total of 11 times, notably winning the Stanley Cup in their first season (to be fair, it was a relocated team instead of an expansion team, which tends to make things easier). The very next season in 1997, the Avs were beaten by the Detroit Red Wings, who later won the Stanley Cup, which disqualifies them from the curse. On an interesting note, every time the Avalanche lost to the Red Wings in the playoffs, the Wings went on to win the Cup.

The Minnesota Wild made the playoffs twice, bowing out to the Ducks (Mighty and not-so-much) both times. The second time in 2007, the Ducks went on to win the Cup, disqualifying them.

The Nashville Predators made the playoffs four times, losing only to the Red Wings and Sharks. Their loss to the Red Wings in 2008 disqualifies them.

The Phoenix Coyotes made the playoffs four times, with no weird coincidences about the teams. They did, however, lose to the Red Wings in 1998, and the Wings went on to win the Cup, therefore disqualifying the Coyotes.

The Tampa Bay Lightning only made the playoffs three seasons, including their Cup win in 2004. In 2003, though, they lost to the New Jersey Devils who went on to win the Cup. Disqualified!

So, the Sharks are the sole holder of the curse, the only team that has been in the playoffs multiple times never to lose to the eventual Stanley Cup champion. However, that was just the teams that are currently in contention – what about the franchises that have been relocated or folded? Well, I also took a look at all the other teams that have been in the NHL since the Original Six era (so no New York Americans or Montreal Maroons). I’m also not counting any WHA years, since that technically isn’t the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The Atlanta Flames, which later became the Calgary Flames, made the playoffs six times. In their very first appearance in 1974, they lost to eventual cup champions Philadelphia Flyers.

The California Golden Seals, who relocated as the Cleveland Barons, which eventually folded into the Minnesota North Stars, who relocated as the Dallas Stars and spawned the expansion San Jose Sharks (whew!) made the playoffs twice, never losing to the eventual Cup champions. Coincidentially, they were also in the Bay Area.

The aforementioned Cleveland Barons never made the playoffs, so they don’t count either way.

The short-lived Colorado Rockies (who relocated to New Jersey to become the Devils) made the playoffs, losing to the Flyers, who did not go on to win the Cup. I categorize this team the same as the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Atlanta Thrashers, as the sample size is much too small.

The Hartford Whalers, later the Carolina Hurricanes, made the playoffs 8 seasons, curiously being eliminated by the Montreal Canadiens five times. One of those times, the Canadiens won the Cup (1986).

The Kansas City Scouts, who were relocated to Colorado as the aforementioned Rockies, never made the playoffs.

The Minnesota North Stars, now the Dallas Stars, lost in the Finals twice, in 1981 and 1991, and therefore are disqualified.

The Quebec Nordiques, now the Colorado Avalanche, appeared in the playoffs 9 times, losing to the dynasty Islanders in 1982 and the ’93 Cup-winning Canadiens team.

The Winnepeg Jets, now the Phoenix Coyotes, made the playoffs 11 times, being eliminated by the Edmonton Oilers 6 times. One of those times was the dawn of the Oilers dynasty, eliminating the Jets from contention.

So, to recap: besides the Sharks, the Atlanta Thrashers, California Golden Seals, Cleveland Barons, Colorado Rockies, Columbus Blue Jackets, and Kansas City Scouts have never been eliminated by a Cup winner. Of those six teams, only two are still in existence, and five of them only made the playoffs a single time. The Seals only made the playoffs twice, so are borderline.

The point remains, though – any NHL hockey team in the San Francisco Bay Area not only has never been to the Stanley Cup Finals, but has never been eliminated by a Cup winner in the combined 14 seasons of playoffs appearances. The Sharks, however, remain alone in this curse as they are the only currently operating franchise that still has this statistical oddity, and it spans a dozen seasons of playoff appearances.

It was really just a game, a competition between two groups of individuals to see who could follow a set of arbitrary rules to the best of their ability and win. Generally, all sports are like that; meaningless in the grand scheme of things, their purpose to entertain. In this case, it was a hockey game, played between two teams that each represented a country. It also happened to be February 20, 1980, and the two countries involved were the United States and the Soviet Union.

On the surface, it was a hockey game between a team that had dominated the sport for the better part of two decades, and a team composed of players who had no recollection of a time that preceded the former team’s dominance. It was the equivalent of professional players matched against a ragtag bunch of college kids, with what was supposed to be a predictable result. Yet, the college kids upset the professionals, transforming an Olympic hockey game into a “Miracle on Ice.”

Pulling off what is widely considered to be the greatest upset in sports history was not enough to make the game so famous and memorable. It was in the context, when the game was viewed as just a small aspect of a much larger battle. The game became symbolic as a battlefield between capitalism and communism, between the two world powers. It was a way for one, the winner, to assert their dominance over the other on a world stage, where one country could point out and say, “My people are better than your people.” For the American people, it also became a ray of hope after the depressing, crisis-plagued 1970s. Yes, there were the two oil crises, the Iranian hostage crisis, the Soviets invading Afghanistan – but there was also a group of kids refusing to succumb to their supposed inferiority, and doing better than anyone thought they would. The little hockey team that could had reached the medal round against all expectations. A win against what was considered the evilest of empires would surely be a sign of better things to come. The win would give Americans hope and a reason to have pride in their country.

When the game is examined on a much deeper level, more facets emerge. No longer is the team thought of as a single organism, but as a unit composed of individuals. There was the story of Herb Brooks, the coach who was cut from the 1960 gold medal US hockey team just weeks before the Olympics, and who would do anything for a gold medal. Jim Craig was the goalie whose mother had died and father got fired. There was the geographic rivalry within the very core of the US team. On the other side were the expectations that were thrust upon the Soviet players, and their need to win to remain prominent and privileged in their society. Al Michaels was the commentator who strove for impartiality, only to disregard it in the final seconds of the game to deliver one of the most famous calls in sports history: “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” All of these subplots factored into the game, making it more than just win or lose.

But then, going even further into the play of the hockey game itself, it becomes a simple numbers game filled with statistics. The object of the game was to put more pucks into your opponent’s net than they do in yours. The team that achieved that objective would win, the other team would lose. The game did not care about world politics nor the wants and needs of individual players. It was uncaring and impartial, awarding the win to the better, luckier team. It rewards crisp, clean passes and successful breakouts. It rewarded the goalie that controlled their rebounds – as Vladislav Tretiak found out, when he gave up a rebound that led to the United States’ tying goal. The game did not care that Tretiak was considered the best goalie in the world, or any preconceived reputation of the Soviet team. All it that mattered was the play and the actions taken by the players. Everything else faded away into the background, and the players became faceless parts of a whole once more.

The “Miracle on Ice” – the 1980 Winter Olympic upset of the Soviet men’s hockey team by the US – varies in complexity based on the depth of observation. It becomes more and more complex as it is examined further, taking into account everything that is in and around the game, but then it suddenly becomes simple when broken down to its very core – a hockey game. Everything else becomes just the atmosphere, the circumstances surrounding the game.