Thirteen-game winning streaks are always a cause for celebration, especially when you start the season the way the Edmonton Oilers did. What they’re not, however, is a sure sign the year will end with a Stanley Cup parade.
Look, the last thing we want to do is throw cold water on the most fun thing happening in the NHL right now. The Oilers’ run — Edmonton goes for its 14th consecutive victory on Tuesday night — pulled the team out of its early-season rut and has the squad once again looking like the Cup contender many predicted it would be in before the season.
It’s special stuff when only six teams in the history of the league have put together a longer winning streak than the one they’re on.
The issue is, of those previous half-dozen heaters, only one squad went on to win the Cup. Only two even made the final, actually, and one of them was the 1929-30 Boston Bruins club that had to win one best-of-five series to get there.
The title-winning team was the 1982 New York Islanders. And even that almost didn’t happen.
New York entered the third period of a winner-take-all Game 5 against the Pittsburgh Penguins trailing 3-1. The Isles got two final-frame markers to tie it up and an extra-time winner from John Tonelli to survive a monster first-round scare.
They went 12-2 the rest of the way to win their third straight championship.
As it happens, the team at the top of this list was also in search of a three-peat.
1992-93 was a special year in Pittsburgh, not only because the Pens ripped off this crazy record-setting 17-game run, but also because it was driven by Mario Lemieux’s insane scoring spree in the wake of coming back from cancer treatment.
When Lemieux returned to the Pens lineup on March 2, 1993, after a two-month absence, he had 104 points in 40 games (LOL) and trailed league leader Pat LaFontaine — who had 116 in 63 — by 12 points. Pittsburgh’s streak began about a week later, on March 9, and by the end of the year, Lemieux flipped the script and beat LaFontaine by 12 points for the Art Ross by scoring — wait for it — 53 points in his final 17 games that season.
The Pens, meanwhile, went 17-0-1 (that “1” is a tie, not an OTL, remember) to close out the year and won their first three playoff games, meaning they actually went 21 contests without an L.
However, the dynasty was derailed in unlikely fashion by a New York Islanders team that clawed, scratched and Glenn Healy’d its way to a situation where David Volek’s Game 7 overtime winner could send the Penguins packing in Round 2.
Sidney Crosby’s 2013 Penguins made it past Round 2, but didn’t win a single game against the Boston Bruins in the 2013 Eastern Conference final. Pittsburgh actually managed just two goals in the four-game series.
Two of the teams with extended regular season winning streaks didn’t even make it out of the first round.
The Columbus Blue Jackets won 50 games in 2016-17 during John Tortorella’s first full year behind the bench there and were still unceremoniously dumped in five games by a Penguins club that was gearing up to win a second straight Cup.
Washington, meanwhile, was easily the class of the league in 2009-10, claiming the Presidents’ Trophy with 121 points. Then Jaroslav Halak came along and — despite the fact Washington outshot Montreal by nearly 100 pucks, 292 to 194, in the seven-game series — handed Alex Ovechkin and Co. a devastating loss.
Just to prove Pittsburgh has to be somehow linked to all these streak stories, Halak and the Habs then went on to upset the Pens in Round 2 before finally falling to Philadelphia.
And because we’re having way too much six-degrees fun, recall the Flyers — before the advent of the shootout in 2005 ended ties forever — hold the record for an undefeated streak by going 35 games without a loss under coach Pat Quinn in the 1979-80 season.
And, of course, that team didn’t win the Cup either, losing in the 1980 final to the very same Islanders squad that would have the big 15-game winning streak a couple seasons later.
Now that we’ve come full circle, let’s keep the focus on the present and the Oilers. This is a club that has won not just 13 in a row, but 21 of 24, dating back to Nov. 24. Since that time, the Oilers have the best points percentage in the league (.875), rank first in goals per game (3.92) and second in goals-against (2.08). Edmonton also has the fourth-best power play (28.6 per cent) and, perhaps most surprisingly, a penalty-kill that’s tied for No. 1 with Philly (89.3).
Edmonton’s next two opponents are lowly Columbus and Chicago at home. Should those games turn out as the betting markets expect they will, the Oilers can go for win No. 16 in another domestic contest, this time against a middleweight in the Nashville Predators on Saturday.
If they best Nashville, we can all spend a week wondering if they’ll tie the record before they face Vegas in the desert coming out of their All-Star Game break.
Short term, it seems like the Oilers have a decent chance to end up at the top of the all-time list. Long term, all they care about is doing what most of the teams in that group didn’t even come close to.
