When the NHL Draft Lottery (Phase 1) produced a placeholder at the top of the draw, the handwringing began immediately: What if, in this year from outer space, an already-awesome team has a hiccup in the qualifying round, enters Phase 2 of the lottery and winds up with the No. 1 pick?
Of course, should a high-seeded squad like the Pittsburgh Penguins or Edmonton Oilers get bounced in a qualifier, it will be because a team that under normal circumstances would have been outside the playoff picture is suddenly in the main draw. That could cue another form of concern: What if an unworthy outfit actually advances to the Stanley Cup Final?
Considering the three-round grind it takes to make a Final, you could argue any club that gets there — regardless of its regular season record — has proven itself as a quality team. That said, there have been some pretty suspect squads get to the showcase series.
With that in mind, here’s a look at the worst teams to get within four (or fewer) wins of the Stanley Cup.
Senior Writer Ryan Dixon and NHL Editor Rory Boylen always give it 110%, but never rely on clichés when it comes to podcasting. Instead, they use a mix of facts, fun and a varied group of hockey voices to cover Canada’s most beloved game.
1991 Minnesota North Stars
Mario Lemieux’s coming out party — “What a goal! What a move! Ohhh Baby!” — came at the expense of a North Stars team that really should get more play for the astonishing upsets it pulled off.
After finishing fourth in a Norris Division that had two awesome teams (Chicago and St. Louis) and three average-to-awful ones (Detroit, Minnesota and Toronto), the 27-39-14 North Stars (.425 points percentage) went on an absurd run. The fact they beat a Blackhawks team that finished 38 points ahead of them is pretty well known in hockey lore as one of the biggest first-round whackings in history. You know what they did in Round 2? Beat a Blues team that finished 37 points ahead of them in the same number of games — six — it took to dust Chicago.
Minny only needed five games to win the conference final, knocking off an Edmonton team that had won the Stanley Cup 12 months prior. And, by the way, they held a 2-1 series lead on Mario and Co., before the Penguins ripped off three straight wins. Things finally caught up to them in the end, as Pittsburgh clinched the Cup with an 8-0 victory in Game 6.
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1982 Vancouver Canucks
We’re so conditioned to talking about the parity in today’s game that it’s easy to forget what a monstrous gulf once existed between the NHL’s good and bad teams. Expansion through the late 1960s and ’70s coupled with the World Hockey Association merger — the NHL absorbed four new teams for the 1979-80 season — produced some wild record discrepancies in a 21-team circuit.
Despite finishing with a 30-33-17 mark, the Canucks actually placed second in the Smythe Division behind the second-best team in the league, the Edmonton Oilers. And when that 111-point Oilers squad lost to a 63-point Los Angeles Kings club in the first round, the road to the Final was wide open in a Campbell Conference where just two of 11 squads posted a winning record.
Vancouver only lost two games en route to the Final and never faced a .500-or-better club on the path. Unfortunately, the dynastic New York Islanders — who emerged from a conference where seven of 10 teams finished above .500 — were waiting in the Final and swept coach Roger Neilson and his charges.
By the way, the 1994 Canucks that came painfully close to beating Mark Messier and the Rangers could also be on this list. That outfit was 41-40-3 (84 games!) before catching fire in the post-season.
1999 Buffalo Sabres
This plucky team will be remembered forever because it lost the Final on Brett Hull’s toe-in-the-crease tally that won Game 6 in overtime. But the “No Goal” Sabres were really the no goals Sabres. Yes, Buffalo finished ninth overall in the NHL in the 1998-99 season, but it ranked 17th in goals-per-game with 2.52 and 21st in power-play efficiency at 13.5 per cent (though that mark jumped to 20 per cent in the playoffs).
The Sabres had just one player top 60 points in the regular season and that was 40-goal man Miroslav Satan. In the playoffs, their leading scorers were — I kid you not — defencemen Jason Woolley and Alexei Zhitnik, who had identical 4-11-15 lines in 21 contests.
All of this, of course, is the preamble to saying, when you had late-90s Dominik Hasek in goal, anything was possible. ‘The Dominator’ posted a .939 save percentage in the 1999 playoffs, lifting Buffalo to the Final one year after getting the squad to the East Final.
2010 Philadelphia Flyers
This is a bit of a stretch, but we had to get a team from this century on here. Philly finished 41-35-6 in a season that saw Peter Laviolette replace John Stevens behind the bench. The seventh-seeded Flyers actually had home-ice advantage in the Eastern Conference Final because the only team worse than it — No. 8 seed Montreal — rode Jaroslav Halak’s goaltending to upset wins over the Capitals and Penguins.
This Flyers team fell in an 0-3 series hole to the Bruins in Round 2, then stormed back to rip off four straight wins. Philly even got behind 3-0 in Game 7 in Boston and managed to escape with a win.
In a Final versus the Blackhawks where neither team knew what it would get from its goalies — Philly had Michael Leighton and Brian Boucher, Chicago rolled the dice with Antti Niemi — the Hawks got a few more saves and won the series on Patrick Kane’s “I swear it’s in!” Game 6 overtime winner.
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Post-expansion St. Louis Blues
Go ahead and attach your asterisks. For the first three seasons following the great expansion of 1967, the NHL slotted the Original Six in one division and the six new guys in another. As a result, a very overmatched team was going to play in the Stanley Cup Final for each of those three years, and that club was the Blues.
St. Louis failed to win a game in that trio of trips to the Final, getting swept by the Canadiens in 1968 and ’69, before Bobby Orr flew through the air in 1970. The Blues relied on an all-time goalie battery to keep things close and while you tend to think of Glenn Hall backstopping this group in his twilight years, Jacques Plante also did some remarkable work in the Blues crease. He posted a .950 save percentage in 10 playoffs games at age 40 in ’69, then came back the next year at 41 and put up a .936 mark in six outings.
GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Canada’s Marina Stakusic fell 6-4, 6-3 to Poland’s Magdalena Frech in the quarterfinals of the Guadalajara Open tennis tournament on Friday.
The 19-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., won 61 per cent of her first-serve points and broke on just one of her six opportunities.
Stakusic had upset top-seeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (0) on Thursday night to advance.
In the opening round, Stakusic defeated Slovakia’s Anna Karolína Schmiedlová 6-2, 6-4 on Tuesday.
The fifth-seeded Frech won 62 per cent of her first-serve points and converted on three of her nine break point opportunities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Alejandro Kirk’s long single with the bases loaded provided the Toronto Blue Jays with a walk-off 4-3 win in the 11th inning of their series opener against the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday.
With the Cardinals outfield in, Kirk drove a shot off the base of the left-field wall to give the Blue Jays (70-78) their fourth win in 11 outings and halt the Cardinals’ (74-73) two-game win streak before 30,380 at Rogers Centre.
Kirk enjoyed a two-hit, two-RBI outing.
Erik Swanson (2-2) pitched a perfect 11th inning for the win, while Cardinals reliever Ryan Fernandez (1-5) took the loss.
Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman enjoyed a seven-inning, 104-pitch outing. He surrendered his two runs on nine hits and two walks and fanned only two Cardinals.
He gave way to reliever Genesis Cabrera, who gave up a one-out homer to Thomas Saggese, his first in 2024, that tied the game in the eighth.
The Cardinals started swiftly with four straight singles to open the game. But they exited the first inning with only two runs on an RBI single to centre from Nolan Arendao and a fielder’s choice from Saggese.
Gausman required 28 pitches to escape the first inning but settled down to allow his teammates to snatch the lead in the fourth.
He also deftly pitched out of threats from the visitors in the fifth, sixth and seventh thanks to some solid defence, including Will Wagner’s diving stop, which led to a double play to end the fifth inning.
George Springer led off with a walk and stole second base. He advanced to third on Nathan Lukes’s single and scored when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. knocked in his 95th run with a double off the left-field wall.
Lukes scored on a sacrifice fly to left field from Spencer Horwitz. Guerrero touched home on Kirk’s two-out single to right.
In the ninth, Guerrero made a critical diving catch on an Arenado grounder to throw out the Cardinals’ infielder, with reliever Tommy Nance covering first. The defensive gem ended the inning with a runner on second base.
St. Louis starter Erick Fedde faced the minimum night batters in the first three innings thanks to a pair of double plays. He lasted five innings, giving up three runs on six hits and a walk with three strikeouts.
ON DECK
Toronto ace Jose Berrios (15-9) will start the second of the three-game series on Saturday. He has a six-game win streak.
The Cardinals will counter with righty Kyle Gibson (8-6).
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
VANCOUVER – The Vancouver Whitecaps have loaned midfielder Jay Herdman to Cavalry FC of the Canadian Premier League and rewarded two Whitecaps FC 2 players with MLS contracts.
Midfielder Jeevan Badwal signed as a homegrown player through 2027, with options for 2028 and 2029, while forward Nicolas Fleuriau Chateau signed an MLS contract through 2025, with club options for 2026 and 2027.
Both have been playing for the Whitecaps’ MLS Next Pro team along with the 20-year-old Herdman, the son of Toronto FC coach John Herdman.
The moves were made before Friday’s MLS and CPL roster freeze.
Born in New Zealand while his father was working for the New Zealand Football Federation, Jay Herdman was also part of the New Zealand soccer team at the Paris Olympics with three appearances including two starts. Herdman’s loan deal runs through the end of the CPL season.
“Jay is an important signing for us, who will provide another attacking option for the run-in,” Cavalry coach and GM Tommy Wheeldon Jr. said in a statement. “He’s a player that we’ve been tracking since we played against Whitecaps in pre-season and he has very good quality, with terrific energy and the ability to contribute to goals.
“With the recent injury to Mael Henry, Jay’s positional profile and age helps us with on-field options and minutes that count towards the league’s required 2,000 U-21 domestic minutes during the regular season.”
Badwal, an 18-year-old from suburban Surrey, is the 26th academy player to sign an MLS contract with the Whitecaps.
“Having joined our academy in 2019, Jeevan continues to progress through our club and takes every challenge in stride,” Whitecaps FC sporting director Axel Schuster said in a statement. “He is comfortable on the ball, positionally sound, and does the simple things very well. We are excited for Jeevan to make the next step in his young career.”
Badwal has made 19 appearances with Whitecaps 2 this season, scoring two goals and adding three assists. A Canadian youth international, he started all three matches for Canada at the 2023 FIFA U-17 World Cup
Badwal made his first-team debut off the bench in the first leg of the Canadian Championship semifinal against Pacific FC.
Chateau was originally selected 74th overall by the Whitecaps in the 2024 MLS SuperDraft after spending two years at St. John’s University.
The 22-year-old from Ottawa signed an MLS NEXT Pro contract with Whitecaps FC 2 in March. He leads Whitecaps FC 2 in goal-scoring this season with eight goals across 21 appearances (including eight starts).
“Nicolas leads MLS NEXT Pro in shots on target, has a very strong work rate and willpower. We are looking forward to seeing his growth as he builds on his young professional career,” said Schuster.
Chateau made his first-team debut as a second-half substitute at CF Montreal on July 6.
Herdman, who joined the Whitecaps academy as a 13-year-old, has made 19 appearances for Whitecaps FC 2 in 2024, scoring six goals and adding three assists. He made his MLS debut in April as a second-half substitute in a 2-0 victory at the Seattle Sounders.
Internationally, Herdman has represented New Zealand 29 times across the U-19, U-20, and U-23 sides. He was part of New Zealand’s squad at the 2023 FIFA U-20 World Cup, starting three matches at the tournament and scoring against Uzbekistan.
The Whitecaps host San Jose on Saturday while Cavalry entertains Atletico Ottawa on Sunday.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024
