After watching Jonathan Toews treat the Clarence Campbell Trophy with all the warmth and appreciation one would give to a bag of Jungle's lung butter, I felt compelled to reset my feelings on the dumbest tradition in sports. The captains of the 2 NHL conference champions refusing to touch the conference trophies. They claim it's bad luck. It’s not the trophy they truly want. Blah blah blah. It's ridiculous.A conference title is a huge accomplishment. For most of the NHL’s history, grown men went bonkers because they had outduelled five other hockey teams to win the Cup. Wow. Five whole teams. Today's conference winners have just beaten out 14 other clubs. You have to celebrate that, don’t you? I’d be grabbing that trophy, doing laps, up into the stands, charging through the press box then swinging on a wire from the ceiling, spewing champagne everywhere, screaming, “Wooooooooooo!”But, no. They say it’s all bad luck.
To see if that's true, I did some intense research. Try to stay with me on this. The math gets a little tricky here. Most years, there are two teams who don’t celebrate their conference titles. My records tell me that not celebrating works an incredible 50 per cent of the time. The current failure rate of the superstition is also 50 per cent.Those are telling stats, indeed...and they're telling you, it's stupid not to celebrate.
Last year Sidney Crosby partied with Clarence. To paraphrase Crosby, "What did not touching it in 2008 get them?" Two weeks later, the Pens won it all. Toews, Captain Serious, completely missed that, I guess. He bought into the superstition tonight, treating it like it’s been lovingly slathered with anthrax. If the Flyers embrace the trophy tomorrow night, I'm taking them to win it all.
