Champion DNA: Tonybet looks at what separates contenders from winners

As the NBA and NHL seasons approach their finales, Tonybet takes a look at the role players, defensive specialists, and unsung contributors who separate champions from contenders in the NBA and NHL playoffs.

At 11:22 of overtime in a Game 7 on 18 May, Alex Newhook gathered the puck high in the faceoff circle and won a series with a wrist shot – a feat he had already pulled off once this spring. He became only the second player in NHL history to clinch two Game 7s in a single postseason, and you would still have struggled to find his name on a Montreal Canadiens poster. That is almost always how it goes.

We spend the spring talking about the stars, because the stars are why we watch. But the teams still standing in June tend to be settled by something less photogenic: who stops the puck, who scores when the first line is smothered, and who sinks the free throw on tired legs. Talent gets you to the stage. Something harder keeps you there. Call it champion DNA – less about who a team has than what a team is.

The structure-first team

Begin with the clearest case in either sport. The Carolina Hurricanes have opened this postseason 8–0, surrendering ten goals across two rounds – the first team to begin a playoffs that perfectly since the 1985 Edmonton Oilers, and the first to sweep two consecutive rounds since the league settled on its modern four-round format in 1987. None of it rests on a single transcendent name. Frederik Andersen has allowed two goals or fewer in eight straight games. The second line of Taylor Hall, Logan Stankoven and Jackson Blake has combined for 31 points and a plus-25, scoring the kind of goals usually demanded of the marquee men. Rod Brind’Amour, who captained Carolina’s only Cup win in 2006, has spent years building a squad rather than a top-heavy roster, and it shows: different players decide different nights. That is what depth looks like when it counts. 

But surviving a long spring is only half of it; arriving in one piece is the other, and rarely is it shared out evenly.

The cost of a hard road

Cleveland reached the Eastern final having survived back-to-back seven-game series against Toronto and Detroit, the last of them won on the road barely 48 hours before tip-off. New York, by contrast, swept Philadelphia and then sat for eight days. The Cavaliers’ own coach conceded the rest gap was a disadvantage, and the Knicks duly took Game 1. Hockey is poised to run the same test, a rested Carolina waiting on a Montreal side that has played fourteen games to get here, two of them Game 7s. Scar tissue can harden a team or it can hollow one out. June usually tells you which.

The names you don’t know yet

It is in those margins – the fourth line, the bench, the man signed for what he does without the puck – that the Canadian story keeps writing itself. Joel Edmundson, from Brandon, Manitoba, played five games of the 2019 final for a St Louis side that had been dead last in the league in January. Cory Joseph, raised in Pickering, collected a ring off the Spurs’ bench in 2014. Danault, born in Victoriaville and a beaten finalist with this very Montreal team in 2021, brought home in December, is the latest verse: trusted with the unglamorous work, and the man who opened the scoring in that same Game 7 – his first goal of the postseason, struck in its biggest game. Each was a man you would struggle to pick out of the celebration photo – and each was the reason there was one.

That is the lens worth holding as the finals take shape. Watch the third line and the back-up minutes as closely as the headliners. The DNA shows up long before the trophy does.

Cashback as a free bet finals promo

Whoever comes through, Tonybet will have the series priced, the markets open, and props on the names likely to decide it – Finals MVP and the Conn Smythe among them. For a postseason this hard to read, the NHL/NBA Finals cashback is built as a cushion: place one qualifying bet a week at odds of 1.50 or longer, and if it loses, Tonybet returns 50% of your stake as a Free Bet, up to $100. The offer runs weekly through 23 June – straight to the end of the Stanley Cup Final.

“A playoff run like this rewards conviction more than prediction – the side that’s right on paper doesn’t always win the night,” said Kyril Liudvikevich, Head of Product at Tonybet. “We built The Finals Cashback around that reality: a cushion for when your read on a series holds up but a single result doesn’t go your way. It’s there to keep the experience fair when the hockey and the basketball refuse to follow the script, and, like everything we build, it’s meant to be enjoyed responsibly, within the limits each player sets for themselves.”

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