Murray Wilson hardly ever thinks about enjoying on the workforce that had the most effective season in NHL historical past.

“The thing that people always ask is, ‘How many Cups did you win?’ or, ‘How many rings do you have?’” Wilson stated. “They never talk about the regular season. And we never did in Montreal, either. The regular season was just a means to the end.”

Wilson and the 1976-77 Montreal Canadiens set the regular-season factors report with 132 and went on to win the Stanley Cup. The ’95-96 Detroit Red Wings and 2018-19 Tampa Bay Lightning, who share the report for victories with 62, every endured a stinging playoff defeat.

With the Boston Bruins now chasing the factors and wins marks, members of the record-setting Canadiens, Red Wings and Lightning perceive what it’s wish to be this dominant all season. And they know there are classes to be realized and apply come playoff time.

“When you have a banner season, you always worry that you have no adversity,” stated Hall of Fame coach Scotty Bowman, who was behind the bench for Montreal and Detroit amongst his 30-plus seasons within the NHL. “Who wants adversity, you know? You don’t look for it. But sometimes when you get adversity, it kind of gets your attention.”

Perhaps a quick skid in January or three losses in 4 video games in March will show sufficient adversity for the Bruins, a workforce Bowman known as the deepest he has seen in a while. Or it may come at some stage of the playoffs.

Montreal didn't face a lot adversity 46 years in the past, shedding solely as soon as at dwelling and eight instances total with 12 ties throughout an 80-game season again when video games ended after regulation and there was no time beyond regulation. But three of these losses got here towards archrival Boston, which was sufficient for Bowman to encourage his gamers when the groups met within the last.

Wilson recalled Bowman difficult the Canadiens, saying Boston’s stars have been simply pretty much as good if not higher than Montreal‘s Guy Lafleur, Jacques Lemaire and Steve Shutt.

“When he set the fire under those three, the rest of us just followed,” Wilson recalled.

The Canadiens, who misplaced simply twice in three rounds of playoffs, received the Cup in a four-game sweep.

A really completely different consequence awaited the Red Wings 19 years later, and so they inadvertently put a roadblock in their very own means.

Bowman remembers an 11-1 victory at Montreal as if it was yesterday as a result of Canadiens coach Mario Tremblay left Patrick Roy in for 9 targets towards and angered the elite goaltender to the purpose he demanded a commerce. Roy was traded to the Colorado Avalanche, Detroit’s largest rival and challenger within the West.

“We were really sailing along, but we kind of destroyed ourselves,” Bowman recalled. “We won the game, but we probably killed ourselves.”

Having already adjusted after a loss to New Jersey within the 1995 last to play higher defensively, the Red Wings realized one other tried-and-true hockey lesson by operating right into a sizzling goalie on the improper time. Roy beat them within the Western Conference last on the way in which to backstopping Colorado to its first championship.

“That was probably the biggest disappointment that we had and I had,” stated Bowman, who received the Stanley Cup a league-high 9 instances as a coach. “It was a tough loss for us because we won 62 games and we still didn’t win the Cup.”

Better instances have been forward. Detroit received the Cup the next two seasons, getting by means of Roy in 1997 and sweeping the ultimate every time.

That turned out to be one thing of a blueprint for the Lightning a era later, after they cruised alongside all season profitable too simply. They scored almost 4 targets a sport and by no means misplaced greater than two in a row.

“Our regular season was great, and we piled up a lot of wins,” heart Anthony Cirelli stated. “How we’d win games, we’d outscore teams. Obviously our power play was unbelievable that year. I think we had a lot of comeback wins, as well. But then you go into the playoffs and it’s not about goal scoring.”

Tampa Bay scored the primary three targets of Game 1 towards eighth-seeded Columbus earlier than blowing that lead, falling behind within the sequence and getting unceremoniously swept out of the primary spherical. Management didn’t fireplace coach Jon Cooper or make wholesale roster strikes, however Cooper stated, “It was pretty evident that things had to change.”

His workforce centered extra on holding the puck out of its web reasonably than filling the opponent’s, content material to win a sport 1-0 or 2-1 as an alternative of 7-0. Cooper stated, “It took us failing at being the greatest show on ice” to discover ways to win within the playoffs.

The Lightning went on to back-to-back championships in 2020 and ’21, with a shutout in every Cup clincher, and reached the ultimate once more final yr.

“It helped us,” longtime Lightning winger Ondrej Palat stated. “If we didn’t get that slap in the face in ’18-19, we wouldn’t have won those two Stanley Cups, so it maybe it was a learning curve.”

With prime heart Patrice Bergeron being 37 and David Krejci about to show the identical age, goalie Linus Ullmark handing over a profession season and a handful of trade-deadline leases acquired to win now, the Bruins seemingly don’t have an extended runway to lose and study. And gamers, for his or her half, have shrugged off information in pursuit of Boston’s first title since 2011.

The urgency is definitely there, a lot because it was for the Canadiens throughout their late-Seventies dynasty, when profitable all of it was all that mattered.

“I’ll put it this way,” Wilson stated. “If we didn’t win the Cup and we had seasons like that, we wouldn’t have stayed in Montreal for the summertime.”

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