One of the things that gets said after every NHL season that doesn’t end in a Stanley Cup win is that the team in question was missing something—heart, toughness, hunger, grit, willpower, experience. They lost because they “didn’t want it enough,” even if they had a key player playing through a debilitating injury or out entirely.
Intangibles and Tangibles
You can’t measure any of these things, but GMs do consider some of them while signing. You’ll rarely see a GM getting a player who “wants it enough” (though something like the Blackhawks’ trade for Kimmo Timonen might qualify there), maybe because that’s the kind of thing people only point out in its presumed absence, but GMs will openly seek out players for the veteran experience those players bring (the Washington “lose every Game 7” Capitals’ signing of Justin “Mr.