In most North American sports leagues, playoffs are where all the glory is, and the regular season is mostly just a game of accumulating enough points to get yourself into playoff contention. You may (or may not) get some accolades for topping the table in points at the end of regular season, but any honors are generally far overshadowed by your performance in playoffs.
That’s a shame for me, someone who likes the regular season so much and thinks there should be more respect for those who succeed in it. But also, I’m less interested in measuring actual success than I am in finding a way to drum up more interest in some regular season games outside of their impact on the standings — and also just in exploring incredibly silly ideas in depth.
Thus, I’m introducing what I’m calling the Transitive Trophy, so named because it plays into the transitive property that doesn’t really hold in sports outside of hypothetical debates (e.g., if Team X beat Team Y, and Team Y beat Team Z, clearly Team X is better than/would beat Team Z). The general idea is the “king of the hill” (or, as I’m dubbing it, “ruler of the rink”) principle — to claim the trophy, you have to defeat the current ruler.
This idea was originally sparked back in around November 2022 by a since-deleted Tweet from Dan Morse (@danmorse_) of the same concept for the NHL, so much credit goes to him for inspiration.
The rules of the Transitive Trophy are simple:
- At the start of each regular season, last season’s winner of the Transitive Trophy (or, for the first season, the first team alphabetically) starts with the Transitive Trophy.
- When another team defeats the team currently holding the Transitive Trophy in a regular season game (known as a transitive game), that team takes the Transitive Trophy.
- At the end of each regular season, the team currently holding the Transitive Trophy wins it for that season.
We can keep track of a few other storylines along the way for fun, but the ultimate glory is for the holder at the end of each season.
So, to see how such an award might play out, let’s trace it through the lifespan of the Premier Hockey Federation (formerly National Women’s Hockey League), starting with the very first season:
2015–2016
In the absence of a previous season winner, the Boston Pride luck out by being alphabetically first by our arbitrary rules and get to start with the Transitive Trophy for the first season, which they take full advantage of. Exactly half (18) of the 36 regular season games end up having the Transitive Trophy on the line, and the Pride end up on the winning side of 13 of those, including a six-game winning streak of transitive games to close it out. This means Boston Pride ends up securing the double in the very first season of both the Transitive Trophy and the Isobel Cup. However, the Pride didn’t lock the trophy down all season: all four teams from the 2015–2016 season ended up in possession of the Transitive Trophy at some point.
2016–2017
Oh, Boston. The story of the Transitive Trophy in the 2016–2017 regular season largely parallels the story of the playoffs: incredible dominance by the Boston Pride, only to lose in the last game. The Transitive Trophy games for this season are just the Boston Pride’s slate of games, as they won every single game except for their final one, which, for the Transitive Trophy, is the only one that counts — and that means the Metropolitan Riveters get to sneak away with the award.
2017–2018
This season was a tug-of-war between the Riveters and Beauts in a parallel of the Isobel Cup championship for that season, with both passing it back and forth throughout the season (saving a brief interlude with the Boston Pride). However, the end result diverges from the championship: while the Riveters took home the Isobel Cup, the Buffalo Beauts secured the Transitive Trophy with a five-game win streak.
2018–2019
In their first season in the league, the Minnesota Whitecaps were quick to get involved with the Transitive Trophy, winning it off the Beauts in the first game of a doubleheader and ensuring it didn’t return to the Beauts in the second game of the weekend. However, Buffalo managed to later win it back from Boston and put together a six-game winning streak at the end of the season, only to lose the trophy to the Metropolitan Riveters in the final game of the season.
This makes the Metropolitan Riveters the first two-time champions of the Transitive Trophy, with both wins coming from a steal in the last game of the regular season from a team that had a quite long winning streak prior and would go on to lose in the Isobel Cup championship. Neat.
2019–2020
This season looks very much like the 2016–2017 season, with the Boston Pride extremely dominant and losing only one game through the regular season. But this time, the Pride seemed determined not to repeat their mistakes: the loss to the Whitecaps came a month before the season’s end and was the first of a doubleheader, so the Boston Pride were able to win it back before the weekend was done and carry the trophy to the end of the regular season.
2020-2021
The pandemic bubble of 2020-2021 season is mostly remembered for its chaotic collapse, as teams withdrew when positive Covid-19 cases proliferated and the playoffs had to be rescheduled for three months down the line. But it also featured the introduction of the Toronto Six, the first Canadian team in the league.
The Transitive Trophy somehow combined both of these aspects. The brand-new Toronto Six managed to take home the trophy for the season, after winning it from the Whitecaps in a game that only occurred due to rescheduling from teams withdrawing. The Six had already failed to take it from the Whitecaps in what should have been their only game in the regular season against each other six days earlier if the round robin format had held. A somehow-fitting conclusion to a bizarre, stressful season.
2021-2022
This, more than anything, was a season of parity — or perhaps just chaos. It featured the most passing of the trophy of any season, with every team in the league holding the trophy at some point. Notably, the Metropolitan Riveters, across two consecutive weekends, lost the trophy in the first game of the doubleheader only to win it back in the second.
Still, however, there was a dominant force, which turned out to be the Toronto Six. They managed a respectable three-game streak to hold the trophy at the start and put together a five-game streak at the end of the season, only to lose it in the last game to the Connecticut Whale, in the style of 2016–2017 and 2018–2019. Unlike those seasons, however, it was the winner of the Transitive Trophy instead of the loser that later fell in the Isobel Cup championship.
Also, if you’ve been paying attention at home — yes, this is the first time the Connecticut Whale have held the Transitive Trophy since the very first season, meaning it has been five, almost six, whole seasons (well, if you count the 2020–2021 season as “whole”) since the Connecticut Whale last even held the Transitive Trophy. You can’t say they didn’t make it count.
2022–2023
Stealing the trophy in the last game of the season seems to be the name of the Transitive Trophy game, as it happened in half of the seasons. (Which, if you consider that you may want to rest players before playoffs, probably makes sense in the real history, where the Transitive Trophy doesn’t exist. But that’s less fun narratively here.)
This time, however, it is part of a showdown mainly between two teams throughout the season: the Toronto Six and the Boston Pride, who put together five- and six-game winning streaks with the trophy respectively. Boston even managed a seven-game winning streak to almost close out the season, only to lose to Toronto in the final game.
This means the Transitive Trophy started and ended its life in the Premier Hockey Federation with the double, as the Toronto Six would go on to lift the Isobel Cup that season. Missing from this history is the Montréal Force, who joined the league in that season but never managed to get a hold of the Transitive Trophy.
Thus, the alternate history of the Transitive Trophy in the PHF concludes, with five different winners: the Boston Pride (twice), Metropolitan Riveters (twice), Toronto Six (twice), Buffalo Beauts, and Connecticut Whale. The Minnesota Whitecaps and Montréal Force never managed to secure the trophy.
More than that, I hope it was as interesting of a look back and reminiscence about the PHF for you as it was for me, including for some seasons I never experienced, on games that may not had trophies on the line in this reality but that I think are as fun and important to remember all the same.