Is the Stanley Cup the hardest sports championship to win?

I am an athlete at the college level. I have played tennis my whole life from the age of 3 years old. I was bound for Division I athletics until I blew out my knee and now I have continued to play tennis at Plymouth State University. While I was Division I bound, I traveled across the country nonstop playing in nationals tournaments many times a year. Playing tennis has given me a large background in sports and I certainly know what it takes to become a great athlete. However, my boyfriend is a hockey player. Now that the NHL series for the Stanley Cup is on, he has said many times that it is the hardest trophy to win in all sports. I get very frustrated every time he says this as I believe him to be completely biased. Well, I did some researching and it turns out...

During the hockey season, NHL, and AHL teams come to gather for a minimum of 98 games a year, including 82 regular season games and a minimum of 16 playoff games, and at the same time, play a minimum of 5,880 minutes of hockey a year. A publisher online has complied this argument through analysis of games, weighing out variables, comparison of other sports, and the internal debate itself. He created a list of rules in order to really get this discussion correct. Some of his rules include only discussing sports where you receive trophies or accolades, team sports only, elite level competition only, and he said this is not a “please like my sport zone,” meaning that he is here to get down to the bottom of this argument and not please any which side.

He chose to compare 4 major sports, Stanley Cup, NBA Playoffs, World Series, and UEFA European Soccer cup. He explains that he is looking at all rules, and what it takes to win the game. His hypothesis lay below.

The toughest trophy to win in the world is the one that requires its team be the proven best in its league, face among the most grueling schedules, compete over the longest time period, and face the toughest opposition their competition can offer unfailingly, night after night, in order to win. Therefore, the teams that win it will have the highest winning percentages, be among the very best in their leagues, and the teams will have to win the highest percentage of games in their competitions and have the narrowest margin for error. The statistics should help us see for which leagues this is the case. The trophy which has the hardest "winning template" based on the statistics will thus be the "hardest" to win.

I wanted to include this section of the report as then you would see this researchers ideas and thoughts going into this report. He is comparing the winners of the previous years and which teams they were, qualifying positions, total games played, game point percentage, regular season win percentage, playoff win percentage, season win percentage, and 10 year average.

At the end of the discoveries of this writer, he compiled many complicated charts that are too extensive to even try to explain as there were many variables and statistics, but it was proven that the Stanley Cup is in fact, NOT the hardest trophy to win. Here is why, to win the Stanley Cup, you play the second-least games of any other 4 competitions that the writer had drawn up. You can lose 10% more games and still win the Cup. You can finish in the lowest position of your regular season along with the NBA Playoffs. The UEFA plays their regular season games at the same time as their playoff games. This makes their season extremely difficult as they are constantly worried about their placement due to the fact that they have their seasons combined. And, in the middle of these games, wether it is cold, windy, snowing, or raining, they still play. The World Series, has the highest number of games played per season with a whopping 162 regular season games. Which is explained in the text that in order to take a .500 record, you have to win the same number of games as you would only losing one game in an entire NHL season. The

NBA’s travel schedule is the toughest by far often seeing 3 away games on the road in 3 different cities in a row. Talk about tiring.

So here is the final conclusion, winning the Stanley Cup is a massive achievement. The writer of this did out all of the math and his final conclusions were that the UEFA Champions League was 1st, then NBA Playoffs, World Series, and then the Stanley Cup. It is considered to be a myth, sheerly talk amongst the players in the locker room. All in all this article was very telling and I am very shocked by this outcome.