In today’s sports world the NHL has a reputation for a wide-open postseason where anything can happen—a two-month long version of March Madness if you will. Teams from warm weather climates routinely contend for and win Stanley Cups. It was the decade following Montreal’s 1993 Stanley Cup that the modern NHL began to take shape.
Recent expansion had grown the league to 26 teams by 1994 and it would reach 30 teams by 2003. The postseason bracket itself had just changed, with playoff seeding done by conference rather than a strict division-based format. More teams and more fluid seeding ended an era where the same playoff matchups tended to recur year after year.
While Canada’s passion for hockey was as strong as ever, and their teams continued to contend and reach the Finals, it also began a long stretch of the Stanley Cup residing exclusively with franchises based in the United States.
The decade ahead was an exciting time for hockey, a mix of traditional franchises and up-and-comers winning Stanley Cups in a changing landscape. And that was underscored by the first two years of the new era.
IN A NEW YORK MINUTE
The New York Rangers were one of the league’s “Original Six”, but they hadn’t won the Cup since 1940. The Rangers brought Mark Messier in from Edmonton to rectify that. In 1994, Messier etched his name firmly into the pantheon of New York sports.
New York was in a dogfight with their upstart rivals from New Jersey, the comparatively newer Devils franchise. The Rangers faced a series deficit of 3-2 in the Eastern Conference Finals. Trailing 2-1 in the third period of Game 6, Messier scored three times and kept New York alive. The Rangers then won an overtime Game 7.
The Vancouver Canucks awaited in the Finals. They nearly coughed up a 3-1 series lead, but in front of the Madison Square Garden crowd, they won another home Game 7 and the 54-year wait was over.
In the meantime, New Jersey didn’t roll over the heartbreaking loss. The Devils employed a suffocating neutral-zone trap that changed the league defensively, clogging up offenses frustrating many fans who wanted the more free-flowing 1980s back.
New Jersey had the further advantage of their trap being backed up by a Hall of Fame goaltender in Martin Brodeur. The Devils reached the Finals in 1995 and used the trap to upset the favored Detroit Wings.
That 1995 Cup might have been an upset, but it put New Jersey firmly on the map and the team from the Meadowlands would become central to this era. They won another championship in 2000. They reached Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals in 2001 and got a third ring in an era that was special on both sides of the Hudson River.
BLOOD FEUD IN THE WEST
Detroit responded to the disappointment of 1995 by coming back with a historic regular season in ’96. The Red Wings had the “Russian Five”, a legendary quintent that came to Detroit from the just-defunct Soviet Union. Sergei Federov led the way. The Red Wings set an NHL record for regular season points, won the first two playoff rounds and looked destined to win a Stanley Cup.
Much like the Rangers, the Red Wings were an Original Six franchise that had waited a long time—in this case since 1955—to hoist the Cup.
But the Colorado Avalanche—playing their first season in the Rocky Mountains after relocating from Quebec, got in the way. A Hall of Fame goalie named Patrick Roy was locked in and shut down the Russian Five. The Avs upset the Red Wings in six games and took the Cup for themselves.
It was the start of a rivalry that would gain national notoriety. The fact that both teams remained elite contenders throughout this era made it possible. But it was the genuine hatred they had for each other that fueled it.
That hatred started in the decisive game of those 1996 conference finals when a hit by Colorado’s Claude Lemieux left Detroit’s Kris Draper with a broken jaw, nose and cheekbone. The Red Wings sought revenge on Lemieux in a 1997 regular season game that led to a brawl.
Detroit got the best possible revenge in ’97 when they ended their now 42-year drought and won the Cup. Then they doubled down and won it again in 1998.
Colorado had their own answers. They signed legendary defenseman Ray Bourque from the Boston Bruins, and Bourque helped the Avs survive a seven-game fight with New Jersey in the 2001 Cup Finals. Detroit responded by loading up with Hall of Fame veterans, from Chris Chelios to Brett Hull to goalie Dominic Hasek. And won a Cup in 2002, including a seven-game series win over Colorado in the conference finals.
It’s not often that a hockey rivalry becomes a national story in the American sports culture. Detroit-Colorado did, and the mutual fuel they gave each other led to five Stanley Cups over this formative decade.
THE GAME IN THE CREASE
The Dallas Stars and Buffalo Sabres didn’t define the era, but they played a terrific Finals in 1999. It was an ironic matchup in one way—the two cities had gotten familiar with each other in football when the Cowboys and Bills became the first teams to play each other in consecutive Super Bowls in the early 1990s. Dallas won both of those games and then added to Buffalo’s pain on the ice.
In the third overtime of Game 6, Hull, then with Dallas, scored on a goal where his skate was inside the goaltender crease—illegal at the time. Officials let the goal stand, one of the NHL’s most controversial endings. The Sabres lost a chance to force Game 7. One more heartbreak for a city that’s experienced way too many.
But Dallas’ title—and their subsequent return to the Finals in 2000, were one part of a trend where success was going not just to new franchises, but to cities and markets that one would not associate with hockey. It was another sign that the modern NHL was taking shape.