One thought certainly is approporiate concerning an NHL season that ended with a sweep by the New Jersey Devils in the Stanley Cup finals: Nothing else went according to form, either.
It was a season that almost wasn't because of an owners' lockout. And it ended far too quickly for the Detroit Red Wings.Before you could turn around, the unheralded Devils had won the Stanley Cup by embarrassing the league's best team. It was shocking finish to perhaps the most bizarre season in NHL history.
The season was already dragging before it started when a contract dispute between owners and players threatened the game. The sides were never more divided, not even during the players' strike in April 1992.
This time, the owners believed it essential to curb salaries. Many said they couldn't stay in business otherwise.
The players thought the owners were not being truthful about their economic problems, and wanted what they considered their fair share of the growing hockey market.
The NHL, with a new network TV contract, hoped to capitalize on the spurt of interest caused by the New York Rangers' Stanley Cup victory last spring. But the league took a public relations beating when the owners refused to start the season without a new collective bargaining agreement.
The players were ready to go. They had, in fact, completed training camp when the owners locked them out on the verge of the season.
By the time the issue was settled in January, the NHL had lost its All-Star game and was down to a 48-game schedule from the normal 84 - just enough time, commissioner Gary Bettman said, to squeeze in a legitimate season.
Bettman was asked if he felt this year's champion should have an asterisk by its name.
"I don't think that's valid," he said. "One thing we made sure we did was to play a full playoff schedule because we wanted a true champion."
It got one, but it was a team in turmoil - in keeping with the tenor of this abnormal year.
The Quebec Nordiques - a financially troubled franchise - was sold to a Denver group even before the playoffs had finished. Winnipeg managed to save its Jets, another team with financial problems, with an 11th-hour local effort.
The Nordiques proved one of the surprises of the 1994-95 season with the best record in the Eastern Conference. They were also surprising losers to the Rangers in the first round of the playoffs.