The Presidents' Trophy winner is normally guaranteed home-ice advantage throughout the
Stanley Cup playoffs as the top seed. This does not necessarily correlate to success in the playoffs, however. The Trophy has been awarded 37 times, but only eight of the winners have gone on to win the Stanley Cup in their respective years, leading to a popular superstition that the Trophy may be
cursed. In addition, eight Presidents' Trophy winners have been eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, with first-round upsets being common in the NHL compared to other major professional sports. Since the salary cap era of the NHL from 2005–06 onwards the first-placed NHL team has had the lowest probability of winning the playoff championship, compared to the other three North American major professional sports leagues (NBA, MLB, and NFL). NHL broadcaster
Darren Eliot attributes the apparent lack of playoff success to the different style of competition compared to the regular season: instead of playing different teams every night, the goal is to advance through four
best-of-seven playoff series. The Presidents' Trophy winner may have to go through other playoff clubs who might have a hotter goaltender, a better defensive team or other players that pose match-up problems. If the regular season champion's primary success was merely outscoring others, they may be out of luck facing goaltenders that can shut them out. Ian Cooper, writing for the
Toronto Star, noted that "of 11 Presidents' Trophy winners to lose in the first two rounds, seven came from divisions that were among the league's weaker half ... If a team dominates a weak division, its shortcomings should become apparent once it faces stiffer competition from the rest of the conference". Jonathan Weiss, writing for the Bleacher Report in 2010, also noted that of the teams between 1982 and 2009 that led the League in points during the regular season, 12 of them (45 per cent) reached the Stanley Cup Final, while of the other 405 teams during that same time period, only 42 (10 per cent) advanced to the final round, concluding that "the team that leads the NHL in regular season points is four to five times more likely than any other team in the playoffs to make it into the Stanley Cup Final, and seven to eight times more likely to win the Cup". The Detroit Red Wings were considered an example of the Presidents' Trophy curse in the 1990s, as they reached the
1995 Stanley Cup Final only to be swept in four games by the underdog
New Jersey Devils. The Red Wings went on to win their second straight Presidents' Trophy in their record-setting
1995–96 season, but they were defeated by the newly relocated
Colorado Avalanche in the conference finals, sparking a
particularly vicious rivalry between the two teams in subsequent seasons. In the 1996–97 season, the Avalanche were the defending Cup champions and won the Presidents' Trophy but lost the conference finals which was a rematch against the Red Wings who went on to win the Cup. The Red Wings would go onto the defeat the Presidents' Trophy-winning Dallas Stars in the 1998 Western Conference finals, en route to the Red Wings' second straight Cup win. Thereafter, in three of four seasons, the Presidents' Trophy winning team went on to win the Stanley Cup (Stars in 1999, Avalanche in 2001, and Red Wings in 2002). Since the Blackhawks won the Presidents' Trophy and Stanley Cup in the lockout-shortened 2012–13 season, the "curse" has been more pronounced. The
2018–19 Tampa Bay Lightning were swept in the first round by the Wild Card
Columbus Blue Jackets after a dominant season in which they tied the 1995–96 Detroit Red Wings' record for regular season wins, becoming the first Presidents' Trophy winner to suffer this fate. Adding to the ignominy was the Blue Jackets' previous lack of postseason success, as their sweep of the Lightning was their first playoff series victory in franchise history, with only four previous playoff qualifications. By contrast, the Lightning had made several deep playoff runs in the previous seasons (including a Cup Finals appearance in 2015). Over the next three years, the Lightning did not win the Presidents' Trophy but nevertheless won two consecutive Stanley Cups while reaching a third consecutive Stanley Cup Final. For the
2022–23 Boston Bruins; after setting new records for single-season wins and points, they proceeded to lose in the first round in seven games to the
Florida Panthers after having led the series three games to one. The Panthers were incidentally the previous season's Presidents' Trophy winners, where their 2021–22 season ended when they were swept in the second round by the Lightning (en route to the Lightning's third consecutive Finals appearance). Since the introduction of the
salary cap in the season, just one Presidents' Trophy winner (the 2012–13 Blackhawks) have won the Stanley Cup in the same season. Only five times in the history of the Presidents' Trophy has a team missed the playoffs the season after winning the award: the New York Rangers did it twice, who won the Trophy in the season and missed the playoffs in (and then rebounded to win both the Presidents' Trophy and Stanley Cup in ), however, they did it again when they won the Trophy in the season and missed the playoffs in ; the Buffalo Sabres, who won the Trophy in the season and missed the playoffs in ; the
Boston Bruins, who won the Trophy in the season and missed the playoffs in despite having a winning record; and the
Winnipeg Jets, who won the Trophy in the season and missed the playoffs in the season, the first time the reigning Presidents' Trophy winner missed the playoffs in consecutive seasons. Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, the Boston Bruins only played 70 games when the
2019–20 season regular season was curtailed, but were atop the standings and so received the Presidents' Trophy. Under the
special 2020 playoff format that was then conducted, with a round-robin tournament for the top four teams in each conference, the Bruins were not guaranteed home-ice advantage in all postseason rounds. ==Winners==