11 Reasons Why the Stanley Cup Finals Are Better Than the World Series
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They say that there is nothing better than a Game 7 in pretty much every sport that has a series-formatted playoff.
I'd like to amend that statement. There is nothing better than Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, even in this month of baseball's biggest series.
Both the World Series and the Stanley Cup Finals have been around for a very long time, but there is a reason why they call Lord Stanley's Cup the greatest trophy in all of sports.
Here's 11 reasons why the Stanley Cup Finals are better than the World Series.
The Trophy
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I'll be the first to tell you that the World Series Trophy is a pretty darn cool-looking trophy, there is no denying that.
It might be the only real trophy that can visually compete with the Stanley Cup. I like that it incorporates the flags of each team in the league, and isn't just a big baseball on the top of a column.
Still, it doesn't compete with the grandeur that is Lord Stanley's Cup.
The Cup is almost three feet tall and weighs 35 pounds. Yes, a lot of that is the added rings that has the player's names engraved, but that has become part of how we know the Cup today.
It is the only trophy to engrave the names of the players and coaches that won it on the actual trophy itself, that people literally drink out of, that is given straight to the players and that gets taken straight to the fans as well.
The Stanley Cup is "The People's Trophy."
The Purity of the Game
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I'm sorry to all you baseball nuts out there, but there is still a giant cloud that hangs over the whole sport, and that includes the World Series.
That cloud's name is steroids.
For years, the front office of baseball had turned a blind eye because it helped create more home runs and more excitement after a player's strike had killed the popularity of the game for a long time. The fact that it was cheating didn't seem to bother anybody.
This definitely taints a championship when players were using these illegal substances in order to help their own play.
The NHL has been very forward-thinking in its prevention of performance-enhancing substances, and it is something that you never hear about when discussing the NHL.
Not only do these guys know that it's stupid to take, hockey players have too much respect for the game that they play to cheapen any part of it in that way.
The Intensity
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This is not to say that there is no intensity in the World Series, far from it. This is simply stating that the intensity of the game of hockey itself outdoes that of a baseball game, especially in the playoffs.
There are a lot of tense moments within baseball, but there is also a ton of time between those tense moments.
The entirety of a game in the Stanley Cup Finals is intense, and the flow of the game makes it so that intensity is a consistent thing.
Then add in the physical nature of the game of hockey versus that complete lack of contact in baseball, save for the occasional play at the plate, and the intensity is upped that much more.
Even when a series is well in hand, the games still have a ton of intensity. Just ask the Colorado Avalanche and the Florida Panthers about that one.
Playoff Beards
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One of my favorite things about the NHL playoffs is seeing the playoff beards that players begin to show off.
By the time they reach the Stanley Cup Finals, it looks like these guys might actually be related to the snow monster from The Empire Strikes Back.
These guys don't care about the way they look, or how ridiculous it is that they might actually be physically incapable of growing a beard, it's tradition, and you do it for your team's good luck.
Baseball doesn't really have that type of a tradition, and I think that a lot of the players are too "pretty" to do it anyways.
I mean, can you really picture A-Rod trying to grow something that might damage his GQ image? I somehow doubt it.
The Crowds
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One thing that often gets overlooked in the intense struggle that is the Stanley Cup Finals is the environment that is provided by the crowd.
Baseball fans definitely create a pretty good environment for their teams to play in and do make a good amount of noise while the play is actually happening.
So it may be more of a nature of the game type of thing that creates a more intense and more exciting environment in hockey than in baseball, because the game just has a much more consistent flow.
In baseball there is so much time between innings, between batters and sometimes even between pitches, that there can be a lot of inconsistency in the environment, whereas hockey is always on the go.
Play stoppages don't last long in hockey. If the puck gets frozen, there's maybe 10 seconds before it gets dropped again.
Plus, the fans love all the "extra-curricular" activities that come along with hockey and love it when the players start to get into shoving matches. The teams just feed off of that intensity.
The environment within the World Series is very good, and the fans are passionate and loud, but the Stanley Cup Finals are just that much more.
The Toughness of the Players
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Pretty much every sport ends up making some kind of comment during their playoffs that everybody is hurt when you get into the playoffs.
That's true, but few athletes play through their injuries the way that NHL players do during the Stanley Cup Finals.
To memory, there is only one baseball player in recent memory who can make any type of claim to that sort of toughness, and that's Curt Schilling.
NHL players play through broken hands, fractured bones, strained muscles and (until recently anyways) concussions.
I'm not saying that baseball players don't want to win just as much as hockey players do, but I am saying that hockey players are the tougher group in the grand scheme of things.
The Rivalries
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Much in the same way as the American League and National League teams very rarely play each other, the teams that play in the Stanley Cup Finals see each other twice a year at the absolute most.
Even with the fact that the teams almost never see each other, when these teams get going for seven games they really start to dislike each other a lot.
I don't think it was ever more apparent than this past season with the Boston Bruins and the Vancouver Canucks, who played one of the most heated and physical battles between teams that has been seen in a long time.
Most of the time, the Conference Playoffs get a lot nastier because of how often the teams play each other, but the intensity of the Stanley Cup Finals allows for that same kind of contempt to show up between players who don't get much of a chance to dislike each other during the season.
This definitely leads to some exciting matchups the following season, especially if they end up meeting in the Finals again, as the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins did.
That kind of fire just isn't there between the teams in the World Series. They want to win, sure, but you just won't see the kind of animosity between teams that shows up during the Stanley Cup Finals.
The History
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There is no trophy or competition for a trophy on the continent of North America that goes back further than the Stanley Cup.
This trophy has been awarded before the NHL was ever the NHL.
While Major League Baseball is the only league that can come close to rivaling the Stanley Cup, having first played a World Series in 1903, The Stanley Cup was first awarded a decade before this, in 1893.
The history of both of these sports is great, but there is only one championship that has been played for in three different centuries, and that is the Stanley Cup Finals.
Overtime
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There is absolutely nothing more intense than overtime in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and I can tell you why in two words.
"Sudden." "Death."
Extra innings is definitely an intense moment in a baseball game, especially when it gets to the World Series, but baseball just doesn't have the same edge of your seat, can't make a mistake, one play wins the whole thing feel to it that a thrilling triple overtime game has.
Sure, there's drama, but the difference in format provides for a much more exciting hockey game than another full inning of baseball.
Everybody on the ice has to remember their assignment, and can't get caught up in trying to be the hero. There is nothing like seeing a goalie make a series of clutch saves, knowing that the game will end if just one gets by.
Perhaps the only thing more exciting than that is when somebody does finally score, and the whole bench erupts and mauls the overtime hero.
That stuff can happen in baseball too, but it's just so much more dramatic on the ice.
The Playoffs
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The path to the World Series is a much shorter one through the playoffs than the path to the Stanley Cup Finals.
For one, in order to win the Stanley Cup Finals, a team must win 16 games.
In order to win the World Series, a team must win 11 games.
If each sport had their playoff series stretched as far as they could go in each round, the total number of games played by the players in the Stanley Cup Finals would play nine more games than their World Series counterparts.
The NHL has one more full round of playoff games than the MLB.
Since the journey is longer, the teams competing for the Stanley Cup must be deeper and more consistent than those in baseball.
The Traditions
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There are so many traditions that go with the Stanley Cup Playoffs as a whole that just overshadow every other sport's playoffs, in my opinion.
First, the Stanley Cup is the only trophy in all of professional sports that is awarded directly to the players first.
It is first awarded to the captain of the winning team, who then shares it with each of his teammates. It is one of the most purely emotional moments that you will ever witness.
The owners, the GM and the coaching staff all have to wait until after each one of the players has had their chance to hoist the cup and skate it.
Second, the skating of the Stanley Cup is something that is completely unique to the sport of hockey. No other sport has the players take their championship trophy, hoist it for the crowd to see and just celebrate.
Every single one of those players did it a thousand times when they were a kid playing hockey, and you get to see that child come out again when they do it for real.
Third, the post-series handshake is another one that I just love to see in hockey. No other sport has anything like it when both teams line up and shake hands to honor the guys they have been battling with night after night for up to seven games.
I believe in baseball they just walk back into the losing clubhouse.
Plus, when you win the Stanley Cup you get your name engraved on the Stanley Cup, so that everybody from that point on can see that you were a champion. You are a part of history, forever.
The best tradition of all, in my mind, is that each player that wins the Stanley Cup gets to spend a day with the Cup and do pretty much anything that he wants with it.
It has found its way into pools, strip clubs and rivers. It has had children baptized in it, been bathed in and had cereal eaten out of it.
The Stanley Cup has been more places and seen more sites than most human beings ever will. No other trophy even leaves the front office of the franchise that wins it.
