EclecticLip

(Originally written June 14.  Posted June 17.) 

I was grudgingly happy for the Blackhawks’ recent Stanley Cup win — seeing as the Flyers made it into the playoffs on a shootout in the last game of the regular season (!) it wouldn’t've seemed fair for them to win.  Their loss means that the unbroken streak of Cinderella Cup Finalists losing, continues; karma remains strong, among the hockey gods.    That, and it’s a shade less frustrating when it’s the Cup winners who eliminate your perennially underperforming team…

On the topic of perennially underperforming, the Chicago Blackhawks’ recent Stanley Cup win — their first in 49 years — means the mantle of “longest Cupless drought” now moves to the Toronto Maple Leafs.  Here are a few factoids about the last time they won, back in 1967:

• Canada had not yet celebrated its hundredth birthday    (the Leafs won, a couple months before July 1st)
• the NHL was one-fifth of its current size  (it was the “original six” era)
• their starting goalie, Johnny Bower, did not wear a mask!

Yes, that’s right, Toronto hasn’t won a Cup since its goalies started wearing masks.  Correlation doesn’t imply causation, but if in a few years you hear the Maple Leafs ownership floating the idea of making goalie masks optional, you’ll know where they’re coming from. 

The Blackhawks’ win also means that Marian Hossa managed to avoid becoming the probably-first player to lose three consecutive Stanley Cup Finals for three different teams.  (He played for the Penguins in ‘08, when they got beat by Detroit.  Looking to win, he then signed with Detroit, only to lose in game seven to… the Penguins.)  Claude “Turtle” Lemieux notably won with New Jersey and Colorado in consecutive years, back in ‘95 and ‘96.  And the first year, he was even the Conn Smythe Trophy winner!

Below: a photo of Maple Leafs’ maskless, Cup-winning duo of Johnny Bower and Terry Sawchuk.

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Through a link on the usually-relevant, often-irreverent FlowingData website, I also found a brilliant little visualization of Stanley Cup finalists in the past eight decades, which puts Leafs’ fans misery in perspective.

On the other hand, since the Canucks have been around since 1970-1971, it’s not exactly as if we’re doing much better here on the Left Coast…!  The Vancouver Millionaires did win back in 1915 (probably before goalies wore jockstraps) though fortunately we’re not the worst-off in that regard.  The Winnipeg Victorias won in 1902, and so hockey-inclined Winterpeggers have waited even longer than Cubs fans for another championship.  Mind you, Winnipeg didn’t have an NHL team for most of the ensuing eleven decades, so they aren’t quite as overdue as Cubbies’ fans are. 

Further backfill is in the works — clearly, I need to carve out more time to take my mailing list stuff and cobble it into this blog — but I have a new posting here.

Did watch the recent Sens-Pens triple-overtime game from about the second period onwards, which has gone into the record books as the 29th longest NHL game thus far.  I remember watching the Easter Epic back in ‘87 (from the third period on), long before the era of the neutral-zone trap made long overtime games an annual occurrence.  Back then, it had been the fifth-longest game in NHL history.  It was Kelly Hrudey’s 73-save performance that earned him a backup spot on the Canada Cup in the summer of ‘87, and later being traded to the Kings at Wayne Gretzky’s behest.

It occurred to me recently that Garry “Ironman” Unger — who played with the Red Wings in ‘70-’71 and with the Oilers in the early 1980’s, might’ve been the only guy ever to have played in the NHL with Gretzky, Howe and Messier, the three top scorers in the league’s history. 

(Incidentally, Ron Francis, the NHL’s 4th all-time highest scorer, played with Howe in ‘79-’80 in Hartford.  But Marcel Dionne, #5 all-time, only started with the Red Wings in ‘71-’72, the year after Howe retired.)

A quick check online suggests that — there was one other NHL’er to share dressing rooms with Howe, Gretzky and Messier in his NHL career.  And that was a journeyman by the name of:

- Jeff Brubaker  (three games with Howe; four games with the Oilers in ‘85-’86)

Looks like there was one near-miss as well:

- Nick Fotiu  (most of ‘79-’80 with Howe; and one game with Edmonton in ‘88-’89, the year after The Trade)

Returning from Boston, I picked up a copy of La Presse, to keep my French limber — at least on the reading side of things.

I was surprised that the Montreal Canadiens were always referred to in the singular: as le Canadien.  Indeed, in La Presse’s sports section, the hockey tabs are for Canadien (no “s”) and Senateurs.

Wikipedia confirms that this is a common Francophone designation for the Habs.  Strangely, les Nordiques de Quebec was always conjugated in the plural.

Sadly, the Nordiques’ season-by-season NHL record doesn’t appear to be in Francophone Wikipedia — perhaps someone will put that right.  Even me.  Given enough time. 

Kinda cool that the Stanley Cup was yesterday’s featured Wikipedia frontpage article.  Cooler still for my Pens-won’t-win theory, the thumping that the Wings delivered.

By my reckoning, the Wings will beat the Pens in the Stanley Cup finals.

This is because emerging teams generally have at least one huge heartbreak before winning. The Pens (12-2 in the playoffs so far) make me think of the ‘83 Oilers, who were 11-1 going into the Finals. Where they got swept, 4-0, by the Islander dynasty.
Like the ‘82-’83 Oilers, the Pens are coming off their second strong year — with core players who lack experience in the Finals. And like the ‘82 Oilers, the ‘07 Pens got knocked out in the first round.
Similar cases would be:

• ‘07 Ducks: won after a trip to the Finals in ‘03
• ‘06 Hurricanes: won after a trip in ‘02 (though admittedly the ‘06 Oilers were hardly a powerhouse)
• ‘97 Wings: won after a Finals loss in ‘95, and after being upset in ‘96 by Colorado
• ‘95 Devils: won after losing a heartbreaker in ‘94 to the Rangers in the semis
• the aforementioned Oilers (choked in the first round in ‘82, swept in the ‘83 Finals)
• the Islanders, who before their dynasty, had a reputation for perennially choking

It isn’t a scientific law, of course, that powerhouse teams have to lose once before winning. The ‘91 Penguins and ‘96 Avalanche won, their first time out. But they were playing relatively weaker teams. Ditto for the ‘04 Lightning and the ‘99 Stars.

Since the Red Wings lineup has a lot more Finals experience than the Pens, I figure that odds are, this time around, age and experience will beat youth and exuberance. We’ll see how it turns out.