The most shocking first-round playoff upsets of all-time
Every Stanley Cup playoff year delivers a surprise. It’s become commonplace for a low seed to make a run. The 2011-12 Los Angeles Kings were the first team to win a championship as a No. 8 seed. The 2016-17 Nashville Predators were the first to reach the final as the No. 16 overall seed across both conferences. The Montreal Canadiens made the final last season after compiling the league’s 18th-best record.
Typically characteristic of an epic upset: it usually happens in the first round, as the team pulling the upset isn’t expected to win a single series, right?
What is the most shocking first-round playoff upset in NHL history? The Daily Faceoff Roundtable weighs in.
MATT LARKIN: You know what? I’m NOT picking the 2019 Lightning getting swept in Round 1. That team was all finesse, ran into a Columbus group that could win ugly and, in a 62-win season, Tampa was months removed from playing meaningful hockey when the playoffs started. The clues were there. No, my pick for the first-round stunner is when the 1990-91 Chicago Blackhawks lost to the Minnesota North Stars. The Hawks had won the Presidents’ Trophy that year with 106 points. In those days, 16 of 21 teams made the playoffs. The North Stars finished with just 68 points and were 12 games under .500! They didn’t even need seven games to take out a Chicago team that had multiple Hall of Famers on it, from Chris Chelios to Ed Belfour to Doug Wilson, not to mention Jeremy Roenick in his 50-goal prime. Minnesota ended up beating the NHL’s No. 2 team, the St. Louis Blues, the next round and going all the way to the 1991 final. Amazing.
FRANK SERAVALLI: It’s definitely the Lightning getting buckled by the Blue Jackets in four games in 2019 for me. That Tampa Bay team was one of the best regular season teams in NHL history, they collected 128 points and cruised into that first round with 62 (!) wins in 82 games. The Blue Jackets? They had never won a playoff series in franchise history. They “loaded up” that year at the deadline, trying to take advantage of one last run with Artemi Panarin and Sergei Bobrovsky before they bolted in free agency, but they were actually outside of the playoff picture as late as March 8. Were they really scaring anyone? For me, it wasn’t necessarily that Tampa Bay lost – the Presidents’ Trophy winner somewhat frequently loses in Round 1 – but really the way they lost. The frustration that was evident in the play of the Bolts after just two games at home said a lot. They were never able to mentally recover. And by the fourth game, they just packed it in, while the CBJ busted out the brooms.
MIKE MCKENNA: I suspect this question is easier for folks that have been in media for some time, but for me, this is really difficult. When I was playing, my focus was on the playoff series that I was involved in. Or if the team I was on didn’t make playoffs, I was probably more worried about renting a trailer and moving my family cross-country than I was first-round NHL matchups. I love hockey. But once my season was over, I needed a few weeks to decompress. By the conference finals, I was usually engaged again. Picking an upset in the Stanley Cup final wouldn’t be as hard. But there is one first-round series that affected me on a personal level. In 2010, the Philadelphia Flyers beat the Devils, despite New Jersey having a notably better record during the regular season. I was playing for the Devils AHL affiliate in Lowell, Massachusetts that year, and I remember watching Game 5 with my teammates at a local bar. We, too, had been eliminated in the first round of the Calder Cup playoffs. So we were all waiting with baited breath to see if we’d have to go to New Jersey to black ace. Not many guys wanted to. Being completely segregated from the NHL team and living in the hotel didn’t sound appealing. But that’s how Lou Lamoriello ran things. When the Devils lost 3-0 to the Flyers in Game 5 of the first round, there were definitely some cheers in the bar.
SCOTT BURNSIDE: This one is easy for me. First round, 2010, Presidents’ Trophy-winning Washington Capitals were heavy favorites to walk over the eighth-seed Montreal Canadiens having finished 33 points ahead of the Habs in the regular season. Early in the series the Caps were joking about how it looked like Montreal netminder Jaroslav Halak’s hands were shaking when he drank out of his water bottle. Ha. Ha. Not exactly. The Caps lost the opener in overtime and then reeled off three straight wins, the last two by a cumulative 11-4 score. Maybe the Caps were already looking forward to a possible second-round rematch with defending Stanley Cup champ Pittsburgh. So confident was, well, everyone that the Caps would prevail that my boss at ESPN.com and I decided we would hold a long feature on Mike Knuble for between rounds. Uh. Not so fast. Halak – remember the t-shirts that were all the rage in Montreal that spring with ‘Halak’ inside the outline of a stop sign? – was incredible as the Canadiens won the final three games of the series allowing the Caps one goal in each of those losses. I remember Game 6 in Montreal, a night when Halak made 53 saves en route to a 4-1 win, and head coach Bruce Boudreau exhorting his team to work harder, to end the series at the Bell Center, as though he knew Game 7 was no place for the Caps. He was right.
CHRIS GEAR: For my biggest upset, we have to travel back in time to before a couple of my colleagues were even born. The year was 1981 – the last year that the NHL paired playoff teams in a March Madness-style 1 through 16 format. The Montreal Canadiens were the No. 3 seed, following a stellar 103-point season. The upstart Edmonton Oilers were a 74-point team just two years removed from playing in the WHA. They were a no. 14 seed that had no business beating the vaunted Canadiens. Except that the Oilers did just that. Led by a young group of players that would go on to become household names – Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, Glenn Anderson, Paul Coffey – the Oilers swept the Canadiens in three straight games. Game 1 saw Gretzky collect five assists, tying an NHL playoff record at the time, one of his first of many to come. As a nine-year old living in Quebec at the time, I can tell you that this series sent shockwaves through the province. The Oilers were not supposed to be this good, this fast, and were definitely not supposed to sweep Les Glorieux. It would take three more years before the Oilers would supplant the New York Islanders to win the first of five Stanley Cups, but make no mistake – knocking off the Habs in three straight in 1981 was the upset that kick-started the dynasty.
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