This book looks at some of the Canadian sports teams from the last thirty years that nearly won championships. Teams such as the 1981 Montreal Expos, 1985 Toronto Blue Jays, 1994 Vancouver Canucks, 2004 Calgary Flames, and 2006 Edmonton Oilers are featured.
Canadian icon Don Cherry never won the Stanley Cup during his coaching career, but he came "oh, so close" a few times. People still talk about the "too-many-men-on-the-ice" game in the 1979 semi-finals against Montreal (but he's actually referred instead to the Bruins' blown 3-1 lead as the turning point, not late penalty).
Well, Cherry's Bruins had come close in 1978, when they lost the Cup Finals to the Canadiens in six games. Though the Canadiens were a more superior team, Boston did come close, tying the series at 2-2 before losing the final two contests by identical 4-1 scores.
Today, we'll salute Cherry and his Bruins for the 1978 series, when they tied the series in Game Four thanks to Bobby Schmautz's OT goal against Ken Dryden on May 21st at the old Boston Garden. Here's the vintage video courtesy YouTube, uploaded by barkingclam.
Dave Babych (b. May 23, 1961), who played 19 seasons in the NHL as a defenseman, celebrates his 51st birthday this week. We'll take a few moments here to salute him.
Dave Babych never won a Stanley Cup, but came close in 1994 with the Vancouver Canucks. He also scored a big goal in the fifth game of the '94 Finals against the Rangers, helping the Canucks win that one 6-3 to extend the series. Vancouver won the following game, before losing the seventh game by a goal at Madison Square Garden.
But Babych's goal in Game Five certainly was one of the biggest goals of his career. The Canucks had gone up 3-0 in the third period, only to see the Rangers score three goals in just under six minutes to tie the game, sending the Garden to a frenzy. Just 29 seconds after Mark Messier had tied it for the Rangers, though, Babych scored to give Vancouver the lead for good. He jumped into the rush and buried a pass from Pavel Bure past Mike Richter for the game-winner.
The '94 Finals wasn't the only time he came close, as his '86 Hartford Whalers was one goal away from advancing to the Wales Conference Finals. Babych also scored a big goal in that year's playoffs.
As he recalled years later: "In 1986, I was traded to the Hartford Whalers from the Winnipeg Jets, and we barely made the playoffs. Then we beat the Quebec Nordiques in the first round. In the second round, we took the Montreal Canadiens to Game 7. We were trailing 2-1 with about three minutes left when I took a slap shot from just inside the blue line that deflected off Patrick Roy's glove and went into the net. We were thinking that maybe it was our year to beat the Canadiens, but we eventually lost in overtime." [1]
Here's a clip of the '94 goal, courtesy this YouTube video uploaded by savoytruffle:
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[1] "The Game I'll Never Forget," 2002.
Fernie, B.C.'s Shane Churla played in the NHL as a right-winger, playing mostly for the Minnesota North Stars/Dallas Stars franchise as well as four other clubs from 1986-87 to 1996-97.
Though he didn't win a Cup, he came close a couple of times. He was with the Calgary Flames in 1988-89, but was traded to the North Stars during that season and wasn't part of the Flames' Cup-winning team. In 1990-91, the North Stars had a 2-1 series lead over the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Cup finals before losing in six.
But perhaps the 1994 playoffs should be mentioned too, even though his Dallas Stars were eliminated in only five games by the Vancouver Canucks in the Western Conference Semi-Finals.
The date: May 4, 1994. Game Two of the series against Vancouver. The Canucks won 3-0 to take a 2-0 series lead, but there was controversy as Churla was a victim of a vicious elbow delivered by Vancouver's Pavel Bure to his head. Churla went down immediately, but there was no penalty on Bure. There was also no suspension handed down afterward. Churla ended up not missing a game, but had Bure been suspended, the outcome of the series might have been different.
Who knows? Dallas might have won the series had Bure been forced to sit out a few games.
As Al Strachan noted in "Don Cherry's Hockey Stories and Stuff," the Canucks caught a break as Bure surprisingly was not suspended, and would go on to guide the team to within a game of winning the Stanley Cup. "Astonishingly," Strachan noted, "no suspension was handed down by Brian Burke, who was in charge of NHL discipline at the time. ... Had the Canucks been deprived of Bure's services, they might not have made their subsequent run to the Stanley Cup final against the New York Rangers." [1]
Here is the clip of Bure's elbow to Churla's head, courtesy hockeyfightguy:
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[1] Don Cherry's Hockey Stories and Stuff, p. 197.
