NHL West Notes

The NHL playoffs finally get started tomorrow night May 2nd with four games. Earlier I posted some notes about the 8 NHL East qualifying teams as that was set for quite a while. Among them, only President’s Trophy winning Florida (Panthers) has never won a title. (By the way Florida/Miami is the NHL top seed as cited above while the NBA Miami Heat are the Eastern Conference top seed and only Phoenix (Suns) had a better “reg” record).

In the NHL West, six of the 8 teams have previous titles. The Edmonton Oilers have 5, none since they won an incredible 5th in 7 seasons (ode to Vince Lombardi’s Packers who did the same), in 1990, while the L.A. Kings, the Oilers’ first round opponent, as they were in a memorable best of 5 “such” series forty years ago, and West top seed Colorado Avalanche have 2 titles each. (The ‘Lanche’s first round opponent, the Nashville Predators and the Minnesota Wild are the two NHL West teams that have not won a title).

St. Louis (Blues), Dallas (Stars) and the Calgary Flames each have won one title. Oddly (NINE is an ODD number), those 3 teams’ lone crowns came in years ending in “9,” the Flames winning in 1989, the Stars in 1999 and the Blues in 2019. All 3 clinched the title on the road, the Flames and Stars in 6 games while “St. Loo” won at Boston in #7, after failing to clinch in a home 6th game.

Lanny McDonald, pictured above, was a member of the 1989 Stanley Cup Champion, Calgary Flames’ team.