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Presidents' Trophy

The Presidents' Trophy is an award presented by the National Hockey League to the team which finished with the best record in the entire league during the regular season. It was introduced at the start of the 1985-86 NHL season by the league's Board of Governors. The winning team is also awarded 350,000 Canadian dollars, to be shared between the team and its players. Hockey is the only one of the four "major" North American team sports that presents a formal award of this type to its top regular-season finisher, although the National Basketball Association does provide bonus money to the team that finishes best overall.

The award is regarded as the second most prestigious a hockey team can win, albeit a distant second, to the Stanley Cup. Winning the award is very difficult, perhaps even more difficult that winning the Stanley Cup, as it is a competition of thirty teams, each of which play 82 games between October and April each year. While less than half of all Presidents' Trophy winners have gone on to win the Stanley Cup, it remains the most likely position to produce the cup winner, as the Presidents' Trophy winner is guaranteed home-ice advantage in all four rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs, provided the team advances that far.

In the Original Six era, the same criteria now observed for winning the Presidents' Trophy was used to award the Prince of Wales Trophy. From 1967-68 through 1980-81, separate trophies were presented to the top regular-season finishers in each division (conference from the 1974-75 season onward) — the Prince of Wales Trophy for the first-place team in the Eastern Division (Wales Conference after 1974) and the Clarence S. Campbell Bowl for the corresponding team in the Western Division (Campbell Conference after 1974). However, no trophy was awarded to the team that finished with the best overall record in the entire league during this period, and no trophy at all was awarded based on the results of the regular season from the 1981-82 season through the 1984-85 season, the Wales and Campbell trophies having been transferred to the playoff champions of those conferences in 1981-82; a cash bonus was given to each player on the team with the league's best regular-season record during these years, to which the Presidents' Trophy was added in 1985-86.

President's Trophy Winners:

Regular Season Champions prior to 1986

External link

NHL.com - The Presidents' Trophy

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10-26-2009 08:16:03
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