Hockey history nerds: Are you all ready for the big anniversary? Got your balloons, streamers, and wall-length banners reading “Happy 37th”?
Literally everyone else: It’s OK that you have no idea what I’m talking about. You’re about to learn something, and while I can’t promise it will be educational or enriching, it will be weird.
This coming Sunday marks 37 years since the debut of a brief and essentially forgotten piece of the NHL offseason known as the supplemental draft. Not to be confused with the far more well-known entry draft (or the equally forgotten waiver draft), the supplemental draft was a special event specifically for college players. Not all of them, mind you, but we’ll get to that.
Of course, this being the NHL, even the simplest concepts inevitably go sideways. So as we get ready to celebrate the anniversary, let’s remember (and/or learn for the first time) 10 fun facts about the old supplemental draft.
1. The concept was relatively straightforward
So what was the supplemental draft? Basically, it was a way to assign the NHL rights of college players who were too old for the standard entry draft.
The supplemental draft was first established for the 1986 offseason. To be eligible, a player would have to be 21 or older and undrafted, with at least a year of college play but no professional experience. In its original form, the draft would last two rounds, with the first open only to non-playoff teams and the second open to everyone.
Simple enough, you might think. But why have the draft at all? And specifically, why suddenly implement it in the mid-80s, years after all the other draft rules had already been established?
Well, about that…
2. The draft was born because one team was annoying everyone
As with most things in life, the problem starts with the Detroit Red Wings.
Twenty-five years ago tonight, the streets of Toronto were flooded with delirious fans celebrating one of the greatest wins in the city’s sports history. It was a truly epic moment, one that stills resonates to this day if you were lucky enough to be in the middle of it.
So today, let’s look back on the game that touched off that city-wide celebration: The Toronto Maple Leafs setting the NHL record for consecutive wins to start a season.
Oh, right, there was also some sort of baseball game that night. That was probably cool too. But since Canadian law dictates that everything has to be about the Maple Leafs at all times, I’m sure that most of those fans were there to celebrate the Leafs’ win over the Tampa Bay Lightning. It was the team’s ninth straight win to open the season, establishing a new record on the way to what would ultimately become the first 10-0-0 start in league history.
I’ve occasionally been accused of droning on endlessly about the 1992-93 season. But that’s unfair; I’m actually a multi-talented writer who can also drone on endlessly about the 1993-94 season. Let’s do that today, as we relive 10 fun facts about the Maple Leafs’ record-breaking start.
Fact #1: It all began with something strange: Actual optimism
Every Leafs season starts with generic optimism. You know the kind – the team comes out of the gate with one good period and suddenly everyone is making “plan the parade” jokes. But the 1993-94 season was different. For the first time in a generation, there was actually a legitimate reason to believe that the Maple Leafs might be good. And not just “sneak into the playoffs with 65 points because it’s the Norris Division” good. Actually, honestly, legitimately good.
The team headed into the season still riding the high off a 1992-93 playoff run that you’ve no doubt heard all about if you know any Maple Leaf fans, because we bring it up immediately whenever we’re asked a question like “What was your favorite NHL season?” or “How are you?” or “Why are you wearing that tattered Wendel Clark jersey and how did you get into my house?” With the reigning Jack Adams winner behind the bench in Pat Burns, the Hart Trophy runner-up on the top line in Doug Gilmour, and a Calder finalist in goal in Felix Potvin, there was plenty of reason to think the Leafs could build on that momentum and maybe even contend for a Cup.
Opening night featured a visit from the Dallas Stars. This was actually the first road game in Dallas NHL history, coming just a few days after the recently relocated Stars’ home opener (which readers may remember as the space cowboy fiasco). Dallas would turn out to be a decent team, finishing the year with 97 points. But on opening night, the Leafs handled them fairly easily on the way to a 6-3 win over a young Jon Gruden Andy Moog. Dave Andreychuk had two goals, Gilmour added three assists, and the streak had begun.
Fact #2: It was nearly over before it really began
The second and third wins both featured tight games and late winners. Wendel Clark’s goal with 10 minutes left in regulation held up in a 2-1 win over the Blackhawks for win No. 2, while a road trip to Philadelphia featured John Cullen’s tap-in with less than two minutes left.
That left the Leafs at 3-0-0, which was nice, but not especially remarkable; the Devils, Blues and Flames all started the season with three straight wins of their own.
Fact #3: Things got easier in Game No. 4
The streak didn’t feature many blowouts, but the Leafs did enjoy a laugher back at home for Game No. 4. They faced a Washington Capitals team headed into the opposite direction; the Caps would begin the year 0-6-0 as part of a slow start that would eventually cost coach Terry Murray his job.
On Oct. 13, the Leafs earned their fourth straight win by pumping the Capitals by a 7-1 final. Toronto got two goals apiece from Wendel Clark and Rob Pearson. That’s not all that interesting; I just like to remember that Rob Pearson existed. I thoroughly enjoyed the Rob Pearson era.
Speaking of 10-game streaks, this one featured future Leaf Don Beaupre giving way to a third-period relief appearance from a young Olaf Kolzig, who was still four years away from becoming a full-time NHL starter. From 1989 through 1994, he made 10 appearances for the Capitals, often in mop-up duty, and Washington lost every one. Kolzig didn’t get to participate in an actual NHL win until January 1995, almost six years after he’d made his debut.
Fact #4: The main event came in Games No. 5 and 6
With all due respect to the Stars, Hawks, Flyers and Capitals, most Leaf fans were already looking ahead to Oct. 15 and 16. That was when the schedule served up the season’s first rematch with the Red Wings, in an old-fashioned Norris Division home-and-home.
The Wings, of course, had been the team the Leafs had knocked off in the first round of the 1993 playoffs. That was viewed as an upset at the time, especially after Detroit had romped to blowout wins in Games 1 and 2, even though the two teams hadn’t finished all that far apart in the standings. Still, Toronto fans wouldn’t get too excited about their early-season success until the Leafs proved they could measure up against the Wings.
They did. The Leafs took the opener on home ice by a 6-3 final, scoring four times on 12 shots to chase Chris Osgood from his first career start. As with most home-and-homes from that era, the game ended with some message-sending, including an ugly stick-swinging incident between Bob Rouse and Bob Probert. Both players were handed four-game suspensions by Brian Burke.
In the Friday Grab Bag:
- The Predators got screwed by an early whistle. Should the NHL fix their rules?
- Why it's always OK to ask a player to waive their NMC
- An obscure player who was part of one of my favorite Maple Leafs transactions ever
- The week's three comedy stars
- And the NHL tries to get funny at the 1997 awards, with decidedly mixed results...
Only one team ever truly “wins” trade deadline day, and it’s the team that goes on to capture the Stanley Cup.
That’s what they say, anyway. It seems like a pretty simplistic way of looking at things, if we’re being honest, since all a GM can ever be realistically asked to do is to put his team in the best possible position to win. Nothing is ever guaranteed in life, and the idea that you’re retroactively wrong to have even tried unless everything works out perfectly seems a little fatalistic.
But either way, there is something special to be said for the GM who swings for the fences at the deadline and then sees it all pay off in a Stanley Cup parade a few months later. So today, let’s give the spotlight over to the few who’ve managed to pull it off. Here are the five best trade deadline week hauls by teams that went on to win the Stanley Cup that same season.
#5: Detroit Red Wings, 1997
The Red Wings have a fascinating trade deadline history. They’ve been good for so long that no team has had more opportunity to load up for deep playoff runs. And since GM Ken Holland virtually never makes deals during the first four months of the season, that leaves the Wings with lots of work to do most years at the deadline.
And they’ve had some big ones, although with mixed results. They landed Matthieu Schneider in 2003 and Robert Lang in 2004, plus Todd Bertuzzi in 2007 and Brad Stuart in 2008. In more recent years they’ve gone after guys like Kyle Quincey, David Legwand, Eric Cole and Marek Zidlicky. And they had one of the greatest “load up and go for it” deadlines of all-time back in 1999, when they pulled off the Chris Chelios blockbuster while also adding a who’s who of grizzled veterans, including Bill Ranford, Ulf Samuelsson and Wendel Clark. But that team didn’t win it all.
Instead, we’ll point back to far simpler deadline. Back in 1997, the Wings (then under the guidance of co-GMs Jimmy Devellano and Scotty Bowman) acquired future Hall of Famer Larry Murphy from the Maple Leafs. That’s it. That was the whole trade. The Leafs were embarking on a youth movement and wanted to unload the 36-year-old Murphy’s hefty salary, so they didn’t bother to ask for anything in return.
They say you can’t get something for nothing, but the Wings proved that wrong. In this case, that “something” turned out to be five more seasons of solid play from Murphy, including back-to-back Stanley Cup runs. It’s hard to do much better than that.
In this week's grab bag:
- Gary Bettman doesn't think the fans liked CapGeek
- A tough anniversary for Canadian hockey fans
- The week's three comedy stars
- An obscure player who was once traded for Jaromir Jagr
- And let's watch a bunch of sad Hartford Whaler fans deal with the Ron Francis trade
Puck Soup is a podcast featuring me and Ryan Lambert. We release one free episode each week during the season, plus mailbags and other bonus episodes for Patreon subscribers.
"Biscuits" was the Vice Sports hockey podcast, hosted by DGB and Dave Lozo. It ran for two seasons; the final episode was in July, 2018. You can find the archives below:
