As previously mentioned, I am not a Montreal Canadiens fan, but June 9th, 2018, marks the 25th anniversary of their 1993 Cup championship, so here’s a guest post by Fantasy Sports insider Drew Farmer discussing why that Cup victory remains special to this day…

K.P. Wee

Why the 1993 Montreal Canadiens Cup Victory Remains Special Even 25 Years Later

By Drew Farmer  |  Twitter: @DrewMFarmer

It has been 25 long, frustrating years since a Canadian NHL team has won the Stanley Cup. It seems unfathomable. How could a team from the country that eats, sleeps and breathes ice hockey have not won Lord Stanley’s Cup in over two decades?

It has been 25 years of hurt as Canadian hockey fans have had to look enviously south at the clubs in the United States. The country isn’t even cold in some of its major hockey markets. Nashville, Tampa Bay, Dallas and Vegas have all seen more success in the last two decades than Canada’s club teams. But it wasn’t always that way.

Canada’s last great team

The 1992-93 Montreal Canadiens were the last team from north of the border to win the NHL Stanley Cup. The Canadiens were the last in a long line of great teams from the Great White North. Just a few years before Montreal’s triumph, Canada dominated the middle to late 1980s thanks to the Edmonton Oilers five Stanley Cup wins in seven seasons.

The 1970s had belonged to Montreal, who had recorded six title wins during the decade of disco. Four of those Stanley Cups came in consecutive years as the Canadiens flexed their muscle.

Those iconic days of Canadian dominated hockey are done. It left along with the old-school style of the league and its hardnosed, hard drinking, hard playing players. It has been replaced with glitz and glamor, something the NHL tried long to repel to no avail. Now, it is the glitz and glamor that has taken over the league and brought success to teams in the lower 48 states.

The Great Canadian Dry Spell

On Wednesday night June 9, 1993, the Montreal Canadiens etched their names into NHL history for the 24^th time. Kirk Muller’s second period goal turned past Los Angeles Kings goalie Kelly Hrudey secured the win for Montreal. Although the Canadiens won Game 5, 4-1, it was Muller who tallied the game winner as he achieved a dream all Canadian boys grow up with.

The iconic goal scored by Muller is well remembered by fans of the Canadiens, especially with every passing year that goes by without another Montreal Stanley Cup win.

Since Montreal hoisted the cup on that famous June night 25 years ago, just five Canadian teams have reached the playoff’s final series. The Vancouver Canucks have done it twice, while Calgary, Ottawa and Edmonton have accomplished the feat once each.

No Canadian team has returned to the NHL Stanley Cup finals since the 2011 Canucks. The team took the series to seven games before Montreal’s archrivals, the Boston Bruins, finally defeated them.

Montreal’s rode to the ’93 Stanley Cup final

Coached by Jacques Demers, Montreal was good during the 1992-93 season, but the team wasn’t great. The Habs’ bench boss had seen plenty of NHL games and playoff series by the time he took over the Canadiens in 1992 – but he had never taken a team to the Stanley Cup finals. Demers’ last head coaching job had ended in 1990 as his Detroit Red Wings missed out on the league’s playoffs.

If Montreal fans weren’t excited for Demers’ appointment they could be forgiven. The Canadiens had finished second in the Prince Wales Conference the previous season and under coach Pat Burns, the club was continually one of the NHL’s best.

In each of Burns’ seasons as Canadiens coach, he led the team to the second round of the playoffs. Yet, each season the team ran into its old rivals, the Boston Bruins. Between 1989 and 1992, the Bruins eliminated the Canadiens in the second round of the playoffs three years running.

Burns frustrations were at record levels and the media’s continued pressure in Montreal led to the coach’s breaking point. Burns stepped down in the summer of 1992, ushering in Demers.

At one time, making the NHL playoffs in Montreal was the club’s God given right. While other teams struggled to put together winning seasons and hopes lived and died on making the postseason, it was a foregone conclusion that the Canadiens would qualify each year. The team had last missed the playoffs in 1970 and under Demers, the team’s run of consecutive years in the postseason continued.

Montreal finished fifth overall in the conference. It was good, but not great. In the Stanley Cup playoffs first round, the Canadiens came up against the Quebec Nordiques. It was a showdown of the province’s two ice hockey clubs. It was a bitter battle for bragging rights in the area, and it was won by the Canadiens. Down 2-1 in the series, Montreal won Game 4 in Montreal. Back in Quebec City, Montreal took its rivals to overtime. There, the Canadiens won away from home, 5-4. The shocked Nordiques couldn’t overcome the loss and Montreal put the team out of its misery days later in Game 6.

Due to the Buffalo Sabres four games to zero series win over the Bruins, Montreal was denied the chance to beat its archrivals. After three straight years of being denied in the second round by Boston, Montreal blitzed the Sabres in four straight games. The series win took Montreal to the conference finals and a date with a former great franchise, the New York Islanders. Montreal would win Games 1, 2 and 3 before the Islanders were able to draw blood. The wins to open the series pushed Montreal’s playoff win streak to 11 games. A Game 4 loss was followed by an emphatic Montreal 5-2 win. The Stanley Cup final was set with Montreal taking on Wayne Gretzky and the Kings.

Although Montreal had dominated its playoff series, the team fell victim to the Kings in Game 1. Call it over confidence, arrogance or just bad luck, but the Kings tallied four goals against a nearly impenetrable Canadiens defense.

Three straight overtime games would follow with the Canadiens getting the upper hand in each game. Montreal returned home for Game 5 with the Kings up against the ropes. The Kings were punch drunk and exhausted, and by the end of the second period, Muller had connected with the knockout punch.

Legacy of the 1993 Canadiens

The Canadiens’ legacy grows with every NHL season a team from north of the 49^th parallel doesn’t win the Stanley Cup. A generation of ice hockey fans have seen teams from the United States dominate the NHL. A generation of ice hockey fans have continually seen Canadian clubs fail in the NHL playoffs. A generation of ice hockey fans have no idea how great the Canadian teams of the 1970s and 1980s once were.

Canada is no closer to recapturing its past NHL glories. It is a drought that has seen the country’s national pastime become the hipster sport of a generation of Americans.

While USA Today‘s Bob Nightengale looks at a ‘new’ baseball rivalry between the Cubs and Pirates, I prefer looking back at some of the classic ones that, over time, have faded – or even vanished – due to various reasons (such as realignment, relocation, teams being mediocre, etc.).

Here’s a look-back at an old rivalry involving Chicago’s hockey team, one that was at its peak during the 1980s – the forgotten Black Hawks-Minnesota North Stars rivalry.* Fantasy Sports insider Drew Farmer, guest posting again today, provides us with the history lesson.

-K.P. Wee

*The Blackhawks were known as the ‘Black Hawks’ (ie. two separate words) until 1987.

The Forgotten Minnesota North Stars – Chicago Blackhawks rivalry

By Drew Farmer  |  Twitter: @DrewMFarmer

The Minnesota North Stars and Chicago Blackhawks had one of the most intense hockey rivalries the NHL has ever seen. The sad truth is that the games that produced so much hate between players and fans is nearly forgotten. It has been almost 25 years since the Minnesota North Stars relocated to Dallas and took the franchise’s legacy with it.

Not only were thousands of North Stars fans left without a team, ripped from their hands by owner Norm Green, but future generations knew little to nothing about the team that once called Minneapolis home. The departure left fathers only stories to tell their children about the great games between the North Stars and Blackhawks. The tales of Minnesota overcoming the top seeded Blackhawks on the way to the Stanley Cup finals is just a memory and one that is a part of the forgotten rivalry between the two NHL teams.

In the beginning

The rivalry between the Minnesota North Stars and Chicago Blackhawks began in 1981. Despite both hockey clubs being in the NHL for some time, Chicago since 1926 and Minnesota since 1967, it took years for the rivalry to take shape. By 1981, it was ready and for the next decade the two clubs put on exciting games in the regular season and playoffs.

The games between the two teams were considered wars, and former Blackhawks player Denis Savard has claimed he never slept well the night before playing Minnesota.

In the 1981-82 NHL season, Minnesota finished atop the Norris Division. The team accumulated 94 points under coach Glen Sonmor, while Chicago came fourth with 72 points. The two teams met in the first round of the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs. It was a series of goals as 28 goals were scored in four games.

The Blackhawks 3-1 win in the best of five series stung the North Stars. The team had never won the Stanley Cup and its diehard support craved the trophy more than anything else. Chicago’s dominance in the first round of the playoffs was officially the start of every fight, hateful word and bloody lip. There would be more to come.

In the middle

A year after Chicago dumped the North Stars out of the Stanley Cup playoffs, the two teams reignited hostilities. This time, the hockey teams met in the second round of the playoffs. Unlike the previous season, in 1982-83, Chicago topped the Norris Division with 104 points. Minnesota finished in second place with 96 points.

The series was once again filled with goals from both teams. Thirty-eight goals were scored and incidents on the ice made it a must-watch series. The series was dominated by the home team as four of the five games went to the home side. The one game that wasn’t won by the home team was Game 5 and it proved to be pivotal. Chicago defeated the North Stars in Minneapolis, 4-3 in overtime. The Blackhawks then put five goals past Minnesota goalkeeper Gilles Meloche at Chicago Stadium in Game 6. Minnesota was out again.

The 1982 and 1983 playoff series between the North Stars and Blackhawks had been so good, why not do it all again? That is exactly what happened in 1984. The teams met once more in the postseason’s first round. Minnesota had won the Norris Division while Chicago just made the playoffs. The series went back and forth, but after losing Game 4 in Chicago, things looked all too familiar for the North Stars. Remarkably, Bill Mahoney’s team recovered at home for Game 5 to win 4-1. The North Stars had finally registered a punch in the fight.

The win changed the face of the rivalry. Prior to Minnesota’s win in 1984, the feud had been one sided. Chicago was the bully beating up on the North Stars. Now, revenge had been found and Chicago no longer had the edge on Minnesota.

The End

Minnesota’s revenge was short lived. A year later, meeting for a fourth straight season in the Stanley Cup playoffs, Chicago put the North Stars to the sword. The six games series featured 61 goals as the teams once again showed their unique style of attacking ice hockey.

Looking back on the rivalry, the 1985 playoff series between Chicago and Minnesota marked the end. The games between the clubs had become the best thing on ice for the NHL, but in 1986, the two teams were eliminated from the playoffs in the first round. For some fans, it was an anti-climactic way to end the season. How could the two teams not play each other after four epic battles in four years?

Off the ice things were changing for Minnesota. The franchise’s owner Norm Green, who took over the club in 1990, was looking into moving the team. Unhappy with a number of things in Minnesota, including falling attendances due to poor results, Green worked behind the scenes to move the North Stars. He attempted to move the team to Los Angeles, but his efforts were stopped when the NHL gave the go ahead for the expansion Anaheim Mighty Ducks.

However, just before the North Stars left Minnesota, there was a glimmer of hope in 1990 and 1991. The NHL was about to make changes never before seen in the league and usher in a new era. It was only fitting that one of its best rivalries from the past would be renewed briefly.

The first round of the 1990 playoffs witnessed the Blackhawks once again pulling their magic over Minnesota. It took seven games, but Chicago was on its way to the Stanley Cup semifinals.

In 1991, the North Stars found redemption. As seemed the case for so many years, the teams met in the first round of the playoffs. It was back and forth hockey with the teams displaying their attacking styles. In Game 5, after years of anger and frustration at the hands of Chicago, the North Stars exercised their demons. Minnesota throttled Chicago 6-0 in the Windy City. It was an earthshattering result and it led to a 3-1 Minnesota win in Game 6.

Minnesota’s new-found belief led it past the St. Louis Blues and mighty Edmonton Oilers to reach the Stanley Cup finals. There, the dream was ended, however. Despite winning Game 1, the Pittsburgh Penguins destroyed Minnesota in the series. Most humiliating was the 8-0 Game 6 clincher that saw the North Stars’ Stanley Cup dreams shattered.

The North Stars had missed the playoffs the next season, and in 1993, Green finally moved the franchise to Dallas. The move south ended what was one of the greatest NHL rivalries ever produced on ice. Today, the playoff series the teams contested are just a memory to hockey fans of a bygone era.