With the Stanley Cup finals opening in Pittsburgh tonight between the Eastern Division playoff champion Pittsburgh Penguins and Western Division champion San José Sharks, I am reposting a look back at four groups of hockey people who each have some unusual common connection among themselves in the history of the quest for hockey's "Holy Grail." ...
While Durnan watched comfortably from the Habs' crease which the Leafs were still unable to dent, his teammates scored a playoff record seven more times in the final frame which also set the post season mark for largest shut-out win at 11-0, largest margin of victory at eleven goals as well, and between 7:58 and 10:33 of the period, the fastest four goals by one team as Toe Blake scored twice (at 7:58 and 8:37) followed by Maurice Richard at 9:17 and Ray Getliffe at 10:33 to give them the quartette of markers in just 2:35. And as if this were not enough, Buddy O'Connor solved Bibeault for a fifth Montreal goal 1:01 later at 11:34 for a record five goals in 3:36 as well!! The Canadiens would then go on to sweep the Chicago Black Hawks in the finals giving the Habs their first Stanley Cup title since 1931.
Reggie "The Rifle" Leach of the Philadelphia Flyers captured both the Conn Smythe Trophy as the MVP in the 1976 Stanley Cup playoffs (even though the Flyers lost to the Montreal Canadiens in the finals), and was also the post season's leading scorer with 24 points on 19 goals and 5 assists in 16 games. Leach's 19 goals that year still stands as the most collected by a leading scorer in the play-offs. (Edmonton's Jari Kurri also scored 19 goals in a playoff year when he notched 31 points (19-12) in 1985 but teammate Wayne Gretzky finished with a record 47 overall post season points on 17 goals and 30 assists for the Oilers.)
The current record for the fastest playoff overtime goal came half a century after Bruneteau's marathon winner. After losing the first game of the 1986 Stanley Cup finals, 5-2, to the Calgary Flames on May 16th, the visiting Montreal Canadiens were in danger of going down on May 18th by two games when game two was knotted at 2-2 at the end of sixty minutes. Surprisingly rookie Habs' coach Jean Perron sent out his checking line of Brian Skrudland, Mike McPhee and Claude Lemieux to begin overtime which, in hindsight, proved to be a "genius" move. After winning the opening face-off, Skrudland and McPhee unexpectedly found themselves on a 2-on-1 break which, after faking a shot, McPhee used to slip the puck to Skrudland who cut to the net and calmly redirected it past a surpised Mike Vernon just nine seconds into overtime. The Canadiens would go on to sweep the next three games to capture their 23rd Stanely Cup title.
Glenn Hall, who is also a Hall of Famer, has the "distinction" of having the shortest "shut-out streak" in play-off history at just five seconds. On April 11, 1965, Hall was beaten twice by Detroit's Norm Ullman at 17:35 and 17:40 of the second period of game five of their semi final series with Hall's Chicago Blackhawks on their way to a 4-2 win and three-games-to-two lead in the best of seven series. Hall shut Detroit out, 4-0, in game six, however, and then eliminated the Red Wings in game seven with a 4-2 victory at the Olympia. Hall and the Blackhawks then took the Montreal Canadiens to a seventh game in the finals but lost to the Habs, 4-0, in the title game.
