Stanley Cup Winning Games from 1976, 1984, and 1989

Victoria Monday, May 18, 2020

I just watched a condensed version of the fourth and last game, May 16, of the 1976 Montreal Canadiens- Philadelphia Flyers National Hockey League Stanley Cup Final series.  Montreal won the cup against the two-time defending champions in four straight games.  Fans in Philadelphia's Spectrum gave Montreal a standing ovation.  When the 1994 Vancouver Canucks lost the cup at home to the New York Rangers, the Rangers' first cup in decades, Vancouver fans not only gave no standing ovation, they rampaged destructively through downtown Vancouver after the loss.  I remember listening to the end of that game on the radio on the Alkali Lake school bus entering Vancouver on a field trip I helped lead during my not-brief-enough teaching career. 

In the 1976 game, Guy Lapointe, Number 5, played defense;  I, Number 5, played defense in the Edson house league, my last year of minor hockey.  It was the first year that Yvan Cournoyer was captain; Henri Richard retired after the previous year.  Richard died a few weeks ago.  He won 11 Stanley Cups, the most of any NHL player.  Ken Dryden was goalie.  Guy Lafleur, Pete Mahovlich, Jacques Lemaire, and young Doug Risebrough, Steve Shutt, Doug Jarvis, and Bob Gainey were forwards.  Serge Savard, Larry Robinson, and Pierre Bouchard played defense.  Lafleur scored the cup-winning fourth goal with five minutes left in the 5-3 game.  I wore Number 10, like Lafleur, when I started playing minor hockey in 1970, on right wing.  Mahovlich scored the last goal.  The Canadiens' finesse overwhelmed the  "Broadstreet Bullies" of Dave Schulz, more elegant than I remember him, Bobby Clarke, Bill Barber, and Reggie Leach, the second person from a losing team, and the first Indigenous person, to win the Conn Smythe Trophy as most valuable player in the playoffs.

I was 14, growing like a weed, fit, fast, lean, and full of ice hockey, grass hockey, floor hockey, and any other hockey I could get my hands on.    Tennis balls were for grass hockey, not tennis.

The Habs won the next three Stanley Cups.  They lost only one of 13 games in the 1976 playoffs, and only 8 or 12 of 80 80 or so games in the 1977-78 season. 
The December 31, 1975 game in Montreal against the Soviet Red Army team was the best hockey game I saw until the mid-1980s Edmonton Oilers became the best team of all time, according to Gordie Howe, among others.  Pele called Maradona the best soccer player of all time.  Opinions are not always like assholes, although everyone has one.     

Cut to the last game of the 1984 cup final, in which the Oilers beat the New York Islanders, who had won the previous four cups, after the Canadiens' four cups.  I was glad the Oilers stopped the Islanders from winning their fifth cup and tying the all-time record of the 1956-60 Habs.  I watched that game between the two academic years of my University of Alberta Bachelor of Commerce After Degree.  I watched a condensed form of that game last week.  The Oilers became the first Western Canadian team to win the cup.  Watching them play was watching poetry on ice:  speed, passing, shooting, Andy Moog magical in net, Gretzky and Kurri in front, Anderson and Coffey faster than anyone, any year, any team.  To be fair, Cournoyer was still pretty fast in 1976.  Watching that game again was what made me write this blog post.

Go five years in the future to 1989, the last all-Canadian final, between the victorious Calgary Flames and the Montreal Canadiens.  Last week I watched a condensed version of the game in which the Flames won their only cup.  I was happy for moustachioed Lanny Macdonald, who had reached the 1977-78 semi-finals or quarter-finals with the Toronto Maple Leafs, only 11 years after the Leafs' last cup.  The Leafs last won in 1967, now 53 years ago.  I doubt any Canadian team will ever again win the cup.  The last team to do it was the 1993 Canadiens, who are now years into the longest cup drought of their history. 

I watched a game of the 1989 Flames-Habs series in a taxi office in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.  I was traveling across Canada by train, and Newfoundland by bus.  Nova Scotia bars were closed on Sundays.  The Saint Francis Xavier student residence where I stayed for $12 that night had a crowd of other young people watching something else on the common-area television.  Harrumph, as I say to those who giggle at folks such as I watching decades-old hockey games again. 

I watched another game of that series on the ferry from North Sydney, Nova Scotia to Port-aux-Basques, Newfoundland.  Played in Calgary, that game had a very late broadcast time in Newfoundland.  The ferry lounge, closed partway through the game but for its television, had three people in it:  me and two other young men bent on Christian evangelizing me.  I already had the religion of hockey.  I gave them enough attention for politeness but not enough to miss important parts of the game.

When a tv sports channel started broadcasting old games because the worldwide coronavirus crisis caused the closure of hockey and other sports leagues, from professional to toddler, this spring, I noticed few high-profile advertisers during the early broadcasts.  Who'd want to watch a mid-2010s  game between two of the many boring teams that populate the NHL now?  The three games above had advertisers such as usually advertise on tv pro hockey broadcasts, automakers, for example.  Perhaps these games are more popular than the drivel disguised as hockey that has been National Hockey League play since 1989, or not long after.

Now I sound like one of those old timers such as my dad, who venerate Charlie Connacher, Howie Morenz and Maurice Richard, who played before I was born.

As I age, many notable events recede into the past, but they're worth remembering.  People still watch Hamlet, although I don't remember any Danes playing in the NHL.