2009 Presidents' Trophy

Lore & Background

The trophy was introduced at the start of the 1985–86 season by the League's Board of Governors to recognize the best team in the regular season. As of the 2008–09 season, a total of 12 teams had won the Presidents' Trophy. The Detroit Red Wings have won six, the most of any team. The Boston Bruins, New York Rangers, and Colorado Avalanche are tied for second with four.

In Their Own Story

The building hummed. Not the electric, chest-thumping roar of a playoff crowd, but the steady, anticipatory buzz of a regular-season night in Dallas in March, the kind where the season is still alive and every point still matters. The ice was fresh, the Zamboni had just cut its last pass, and the overhead lights made the surface glow like a sheet of hammered silver. In the tunnel, the sound of skates scraping on the concrete and the soft thud of pucks being tapped against the boards filled the air. A stick was checked against a leg pad. Someone's helmet strap was re-tied. The smell was the same every night: cold rubber, canvas, the faint metallic tang of the ice, and the warm, almost sweet scent of fresh tape being wrapped around a stick blade. Then the music hit, the lights dimmed, and two lines of players in white and blue emerged onto the ice, sticks in hand, pucks already in play at the centre faceoff circle. The crowd exhaled all at once. Eighty-two nights of this. One hundred and nineteen points. And the trophy sat in a glass case in the lobby, waiting for the season to end so it could finally be theirs.

Reader's Guide

The Presidents' Trophy winner is the top-seeded team in the postseason, guaranteeing home-ice advantage in all rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Only eight winners have gone on to win the Stanley Cup; three Presidents' Trophy winners have been defeated in the Stanley Cup Final. The most recent team to win both the trophy and the Stanley Cup in the same season is the 2012–13 Chicago Blackhawks; the only team to accomplish this feat more than once is the Detroit Red Wings (2002 and 2008).

Did You Know?

• The Detroit Red Wings have won six Presidents' Trophies, the most of any team.
• The Montreal Canadiens have finished first overall 21 times, the most times in League history, though this was most recently accomplished in 1977–78.
• From the 2010–11 through 2018–19 seasons, the first tiebreaker for the trophy was most regulation and overtime wins.
• The 2018–19 Tampa Bay Lightning were swept in the first round by the Wild Card Columbus Blue Jackets, becoming the first Presidents' Trophy winner to suffer this fate.