We Won the Cup and Finished Third in a Poll About Next Year

The Athletic ran a fan survey asking who wins the Cup in 2027. Nineteen thousand people answered.

Colorado got 26 percent. Florida got 21. Carolina, the defending champion, got 12.

And the tweet promoting it opened by calling the Avalanche by far the most dominant team in the NHL last year, before mentioning that Vegas swept them in the conference final.

I read that four or five times. Last year. As in the year Carolina won the Stanley Cup.

Let me be fair first

Colorado's regular season was legitimately great and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

They went 55-16-11 for 121 points. They scored 302 and gave up 203, a plus-99 goal differential that was close to double the next-best team in the league. They were the first team in NHL history to have only two regulation losses through 40 games. MacKinnon put up 127 points and 53 goals and was a Hart finalist. Makar was a Norris finalist.

If you're grading October through April, "by far the most dominant" is a defensible phrase. I'd probably use it myself.

Here's the problem

Carolina finished 53-22-7. A hundred thirteen points. First in the Metropolitan, first in the Eastern Conference.

That's eight points behind Colorado. Two wins and a shootout.

Then the playoffs happened. Carolina went 16-3. Swept Ottawa. Swept Philadelphia. Beat Montreal in five. Beat Vegas in six. Nineteen games, three losses, one trophy.

Colorado went home in the third round without winning a game in it.

So when the sentence is "the most dominant team in the NHL last year," you're making a choice about what "last year" means. And the choice being made is that 82 games of very good hockey outweighs a 16-3 championship run.

I don't think most people would say that out loud. But it's what the framing does.

The poll is worse than the tweet

Florida got 21 percent. Florida went 40-38-4 last season and missed the playoffs entirely.

I understand why — injuries wrecked them, they won it in 2024 and 2025, and this summer they added Brady Tkachuk and Markström. A healthy Panthers team with those two is a real problem and I said as much in a piece a few days ago.

But nine percent of a fan survey separates the team that missed the playoffs from the team that won the Cup. And 14 points separate the champion from a team that got swept in the conference final.

Why this keeps happening to us

Last week NHL Network put out its top 20 wings and there wasn't a single Hurricane on it. Jarvis scored 32 goals. Svechnikov had 70 points and 11 more in the playoffs. Neither made a list of twenty.

Same thing. Same reason.

Fan surveys and ranking lists measure two things that aren't team quality: how many people are in your fanbase, and whether you have players who show up on national TV.

Colorado has MacKinnon and Makar, two of the five most recognizable players alive. Florida has the Tkachuks and a dynasty reputation. Carolina has a structure, a coach who doesn't do drama, a highest-paid player at $9.75 million, and a goalie who was on waivers in October.

Nineteen thousand people voting is a popularity contest with extra steps. That's not a knock on the people who voted. It's just what the instrument measures.

The part that actually annoys me

The betting markets have Carolina around 11 percent for 2027. Third, roughly tied with Colorado, behind Florida. The fan poll has us at 12 percent. Third.

The fans and the sportsbooks landed in almost exactly the same place.

So this isn't a snub. It's consensus. Twelve percent in a 32-team league is nearly four times baseline, and any honest read has Carolina as one of the three or four teams with a real shot. That's where a defending champion who lost Andersen and signed nobody on July 1 should sit.

What I take issue with is the sentence, not the survey.

You can put Colorado first for next season. Fine. Argue that MacKinnon's still the best player in the world and they've got the deeper roster and last year was a fluke ending. That's a real argument.

But you don't get to call them the most dominant team in the NHL last year and then mention the Cup winner in passing three lines down. Dominance is a thing you do in June. Carolina lost three games from April to the middle of June.

Whatever

They raise the banner on September 29th against Florida. On ESPN.

That'll settle exactly nothing, and I'll be watching anyway.