The two leading rookie scorers in the NHL will faceoff on Monday night, as Mathew Barzal and the New York Islanders are in Vancouver to face Brock Boeser and the Canucks. Barzal has a clear lead in points over Boeser and is the favourite for the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year, but Boeser is running away with the rookie goal-scoring race.
Beyond the Boeser/Barzal battle, this is a game with some serious stakes, at least for the Islanders, who are still within striking distance of the playoffs. But all of that pales in comparison to the most meaningful stakes of all: the Crap Mantle.
On Monday night, the Canucks and Islanders will enter the rounded-rectangled circle in hard-fought combat to avoid bearing the most ignominious of titles, the Crap Mantle.
Long-time Bulies will recall the Crap Mantle, which came out of one of PITB’s earliest podcasts.
We initially imagined a championship belt that the previous season’s Stanley Cup Champions would possess at the beginning of the season, passing it off to whichever team defeated them first. That belt would go from winning team to winning team, giving each game when that championship belt was up for grabs some extra zing.
It never caught on.
It’s polar opposite, the Crap Mantle, did. Instead of a championship belt, the Crap Mantle is a belt for the losers. Instead of a proud mantle that is passed down, like a mantle of leadership, the Crap Mantle is a mantle of crap.
The Crap Mantle is bestowed upon the first team to lose a game in a given NHL season. That team is, by definition, the worst team in the NHL at that moment. Anyone who loses to the worst team in the NHL must obviously be worse than the worst team and are therefore the new bearers of the Crap Mantle.
Whichever team ends up with the Crap Mantle at the end of the season is therefore the absolute worst team that season. It’s just logic.
One of the few silver linings to last season for the Canucks is that they not only didn’t finish the season with the Crap Mantle, they never once had the Crap Mantle. The final bearers of the Crap Mantle were instead, the Toronto Maple Leafs, who Canucks fans can generally agree are the absolute worst.
The very first game of the season was between those Leafs and the Winnipeg Jets. The Jets lost, 7-2, giving them the Crap Mantle to start the season. It’s a rarity to see the Crap Mantle begin the season in the Western Conference, as the first game played in an NHL season is always in the east.
The travels of the Crap Mantle since then have been dutifully tracked by Crystal240, a long-time Bulie who is the best.
When the Islanders lost to the New Jersey Devils on February 24th, they inherited the Crap Mantle and have been unable to shake it ever since. They’re currently on a six-game losing streak and falling further from the playoffs with every loss. More importantly, they’re on a four-game Crap Mantle streak, matching the longest streak with the mantle of any team all season.
Thus far, the Canucks have managed to avoid the Crap Mantle, keeping some glimmer of positivity abounding in Vancouver. If they lose to the Islanders and take on the Crap Mantle, all that positivity will be crushed, and the true negativity will come crashing down on the Canucks.
I may have just spoken out against the narrative of the “must-win game,” but this game truly must be won.
The Canucks are one of just 11 teams that have yet to bear the burden of the Crap Mantle this season. The Islanders, meanwhile, have had it the most, as this lovely data visualization below illustrates.
The Islanders are therefore the worst team in the NHL right now and have been the worst team in the NHL the most this season. The Canucks must defeat them Monday night so the Islanders will continue to be the worst.
Here’s the path of the Crap Mantle this season as provided by Crystal240.
