Hockey is a perennial niche sport—it’s less watched, less played, and less well understood than basketball, football, and baseball—but it will always have this over its competitors: it’s tougher.
Last October, when handing out the 2020 Stanley Cup, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman called it the hardest championship win in all of sports: “The gauntlet that you have to run to hoist this trophy is unbelievable.” For starters, between the regular season and the playoffs, teams have to play between ninety-eight and 110 games to win the Stanley Cup; in the NFL, the only other genuine contact league of the big four, teams play about a fifth of that number.