IV.

History

The Montréal Amateur Athletic Association (AAA) team, champion of the Amateur Hockey Association in 1893, was awarded the first Stanley Cup title. Under the competition’s rules at the time, the trophy’s trustees arranged periodic title matches between the champion and challenging teams. Montréal AAA was successful in a series against the Montréal Victorias in 1894, but the Victorias succeeded in capturing the trophy a year later. The Stanley Cup championship remained a largely amateur event through the turn of the 20th century.

The growth of professional hockey turned the Stanley Cup championship into a professional event by 1910, when the National Hockey Association (NHA), based in eastern Canada, had become the dominant league in the country. In 1914 the NHA agreed to an east-versus-west Stanley Cup championship between the NHA champions and the first-place team from the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA). The NHA disbanded in 1917 and was re-formed as the NHL. For the next decade the format of the Stanley Cup championship varied, but it always included the NHL champion playing against the champion of one or more other leagues—the PCHA, the Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL), and the Western Hockey League (WHL)—sometimes in a three-way challenge. The competition became a NHL-only championship in 1927.

Several NHL franchises have illustrious Stanley Cup histories. The Montréal Canadiens have won the cup a record 24 times, including one victory during their time as an NHA team. They are followed by the Toronto Maple Leafs with 13 titles and the Detroit Red Wings with 10 titles. All three clubs had notable dynasties that contributed to each franchise’s overall total. Montréal won five straight Stanley Cups from 1956 through 1960, six more titles in the nine seasons between 1965 and 1973, and four additional championships from 1976 to 1979. Toronto won the cup three straight seasons from 1962 to 1964, while Detroit's best streak was four cups in six seasons from 1950 to 1955.

In 1967 the NHL began to add new teams periodically, and since then a few teams have had sustained success in the Stanley Cup Finals. The Montréal Canadiens squads that won four championships in the late 1970s were succeeded by New York Islanders teams that claimed four consecutive Stanley Cups from 1980 through 1983. The Edmonton Oilers captured the championship five times in the seven seasons from 1984 to 1990. In the 1990s only two franchises won the cup more than once, the Pittsburgh Penguins (1991, 1992) and the Red Wings (1997, 1998). The New Jersey Devils won titles in 2000 and 2003, and lost in the Stanley Cup Finals in 2001.