The Montreal Canadiens won four straight Stanley Cups from 1976 to 1979, establishing themselves as one of the greatest teams of all-time. Although the dynasty ended with their elimination in the 1980 Playoffs, that defeat didn’t mark the end of the road for many of their top stars. Many of them moved on to new […]

Before Mario Lemieux arrived in Pittsburgh in 1984 and began leading the Pittsburgh Penguins to a pair of Stanley Cups in the early 1990s, the club had enjoyed precious few moments of glory. Most Penguins teams of the 1967-1984 era struggled just to make the playoffs, much less contend for the Cup. Before “Le Savior” […]

Emergency third-string goalie David Ayres stunned the hockey world when he helped the Carolina Hurricanes beat the Toronto Maple Leafs on Feb. 22, 2020. But he wasn’t the first unlikely, fill-in puckstopper to help a team beat the Leafs in Toronto. Another last-minute replacement pulled off a similar feat for the Chicago Black Hawks in […]

Two wrongs don’t usually make a right, but the 1978 merger of the bumbling Cleveland Barons and the struggling Minnesota North Stars proved there are exceptions to the rule. The path to the NHL’s only amalgamation of two franchises began two years earlier in Oakland, where the Barons existed as the California Golden Seals. By […]

On Oct. 17, 1980, the Winnipeg Jets scored an impressive 6-2 victory over the Chicago Black Hawks, bringing their record to 1-2-0 on the young season. Morris Lukowich scored a hat trick, Markus Mattson stopped 40 shots, and things were looking up for the Jets. Little did they know they were about to enter into […]