Date with destiny

Hockey remains the sport least infected by the once-enjoyable but now omnipresent cult of metrics.  On any given rink, on any given night, a motivated team can take down one judged far superior, a hot goaltender can shut down the most fearsome scorers in the world, a kid out of nowhere can cut loose for a hat trick, a random guy off the street can step in and play goalie.  All those things have happened in hockey.   In fact, all those things happened to the Chicago Blackhawks this year.

It is a sport of spirit and courage, a sport where skill and technique find themselves enhanced, or often challenged by that most insidious disruptor of all, the human soul.  As a result, hockey has the greatest underdog story in sport, the 1980 Miracle on Ice.

The Golden Knights, as they prepare for the Stanley Cup Finals starting Monday, have their own shot at history.  I don't believe any expansion team in the history of the world has every won anything, much less Lord Stanley's sacred Cup.  If they can pull it off it would be huge - incredible.  Not, say Terrance Doyle and Neil Paine of FiveThirtyEight, not quite as impressive as Leicester City...

Infamously, the sportsbook Ladbrokes offered 5,000-1 odds against Leicester winning the EPL title. That number, which was bandied about constantly in the wake of the Foxes’ surprise championship, was probably a sham, set to entice people to place any bets on Leicester at all...

The “real” odds of Leicester’s victory were staggering enough, though. Leicester had to play near-perfect soccer for the final two and a half months of the 2014-15 season just to avoid relegation.2 According to our Soccer Power Index (SPI), Leicester City was the 12th-best team in England entering the 2015-16 Premier League season. Preseason odds for the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons indicate that the 12th-best team in the league would have roughly 465-1 odds to win the Premier League.  

The Knights were maybe 200-1.  But if that's the air you're breathing, breathe deep.  Such moments are rare and fleeting, to be a part of such a team is not once-in-a-lifetime, it's once in a million or so lifetimes.  The older I get, the greater the existential please of watching such things.

When we celebrate these underdog upsets we celebrate a certain disorder in the world, an incompleteness in our understanding.  It is the rare joy of humility, a celebration of the (melancholy if you think about it) fact that anything really can happen.  It is a strongly American cultural trait:  in Japan something would be viewed as systemically wrong if the Iron Chef didn't usually win (Michiba had an 85% winning percentage); and in Russia Mr. Putin scores all the goals.

But on this continent?  In Vegas?

Golden Knights' Stanley Cup Run is no fluke
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