Who would take home the trophy came down to the last game of 30 as Cape Ann Youth Hockey and Westmount, Quebec Youth Hockey players spent the weekend competing in
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.