Should the NHL be worried that winning the Presidents' Trophy doesn't matter?

Boston put together an historic regular season, perhaps the best the NHL has ever seen but winning the Presidents' Trophy gave the Bruins no protection when they were dumped out in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs by the Florida Panthers.

Video Transcript

OMAR: The second lesson that's probably the most important lesson. The President's Trophy does not matter.

JULIAN MCKENZIE: It doesn't matter at all.

OMAR: It does not matter. Get in as eighth, sixth, fifth, whatever, especially with this format, it does not matter. Matthew Tkachuk recently said--

JULIAN MCKENZIE: Let's have a conversation about that.

OMAR: He's like-- he's just like, oh-- like, paraphrasing, he's like, oh, it's kind of funny how we just beat the best team and best team in the league, and now as a reward for that, we have to face one of the other better teams in the league. So, it's like, there's no-- there's no benefit, man. There's no-- Yeah, sure, OK, you get--

JULIAN MCKENZIE: You have to be careful about how you're saying that. You have to be careful how you're saying that because I see what Sam is looking like right now, and there are a bunch of people in Vancouver and other markets around the league who are, like, see? See? Get in the playoffs and anything can happen. That doesn't always work.

SAM CHANG: When you put it in the way where it's like, it doesn't matter, you can get in, you're getting very close to the anything can happen mentality of the Aves from a few years ago and Canucks.

OMAR: Yeah, [INAUDIBLE] I was about to say, that was the Marc Bergevin, yeah, just get in.

SAM CHANG: Like, I agree that, like, winning it doesn't matter. But for me, it just highlights the fact that you can be the best team on paper, you can have a really deep team, you can do everything right, and yet anything can happen in the sense that with a little bit of luck, the best teams go out. You have like a-- I can't remember where I read the stat, I've said it before. You have like a 22% chance of winning the cup if you are the number one team or something like that.

OMAR: Should be higher.

SAM CHANG: It should be-- like, [INAUDIBLE] but like, from day one going in. And it's like, well, what you should be doing is putting yourself in that position. Like, you want to be the best team on paper with the best [? hands ?] rather than squeaking in. Like, yeah, you can upset them, but like, let's also not pretend like Florida wasn't the best team last year. It's not like--

OMAR: That's a good point too. That's a good point too.