Ranking The NHL's Best Stanley Cup Winners In The Salary Cap Era

There are no bad Stanley Cup winners.

Whether a team had to sneak into the NHL playoffs as a lower seed or got lucky with round-after-round against underachieving underdogs, if you get your name etched onto the Cup, then you must have done something right.  

Still, not all championship teams are the same.

With the playoffs starting this weekend, 16 writers at The Hockey News looked back at the past 20 Stanley Cup winners and voted on who was the best in the Salary Cap Era.

Our criteria were simple: we didn't look at which Stanley Cup final was the most competitive or the most compelling. Instead, we evaluated the rosters of the past 20 winners, as well as the path each took to the final and the eye-popping stats their players put up on their journey to winning a championship. 

A first-place vote received 10 points, a second-place vote received nine points, and so on and so forth.

Here are the results:

Just how good was the Red Wings team that won it all in 2008?

Well, you would have needed a wheelbarrow to cart away all the hardware that Detroit was awarded in one of the most dominant seasons of the Modern Era.

Where to begin? The Red Wings not only defeated the Penguins in six games to win the Stanley Cup but were also awarded the Presidents' Trophy after finishing the regular season with a league-best 54 wins and 115 points. 

Nicklas Lidstrom, who became the first European to captain a team to a championship, won the Norris Trophy as the league's top defenseman. Pavel Datsyuk won the Selke Trophy as the league's top defensive player and the Lady Byng as the most gentlemanly player. Dominik Hasek and Chris Osgood combined to allow the fewest goals, winning the William Jennings Trophy. Henrik Zetterberg won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP.

Fittingly, even longtime former Red Wing Gordie Howe was recognized by the league with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

They say you've got to beat the best if you're going to be the best.

In 2022, the Tampa Bay Lightning were trying to etch their name in the history books as a three-time Stanley Cup champion when they ran into a Colorado Avalanche team that was too fast, too skilled and far too hungry to take down.

Colorado swept the Predators in the first round, beat the Blues in six games in the second round and then swept the Oilers before winning in six games against the Lightning.

Nazem Kadri played through a broken thumb, and goalie Darcy Kuemper missed games after a stick poked him in the eye.

But luckily for the Avalanche, they had Nathan MacKinnon (13 goals in 20 games), Mikko Rantanen (25 points), Gabriel Landeskog (22 points) and a 23-year-old Cale Makar who was enjoying his big breakout year.

Having already won the Norris Trophy after scoring 28 goals and 86 points, Makar was named playoff MVP after leading Colorado in the playoffs with 29 points in 20 games. 

In a span of six years, the Blackhawks won three championships. Their second was arguably their most dominant — and perhaps their easiest, considering how few games they had to play that year.

In a lockout-shortened season that began on Jan. 19 and essentially cut the schedule in half, Chicago jumped out of the gate and went 24 games before suffering its first loss. From there, the team cruised to a league-best 77 points in 48 games.

After beating Minnesota in five games and coming back from a 3-1 deficit against Detroit, Chicago defeated the defending champion Los Angeles Kings before taking down the Boston Bruins in six games in the final.

Patrick Kane, who was named playoff MVP, led the team with nine goals and 19 points in 23 games. But this was a team effort, with Bryan Bickell (17 points), Patrick Sharp (16 points), Marian Hossa (16 points) and Jonathan Toews (14 points) all contributing to the offense.

As impressive as it was that Chicago managed to win championship after championship despite losing star players over the years to free agency, the team that started it all was stacked like few others.

You obviously had the young core players, such as Kane, Toews, Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook.

But back in 2010, before the salary cap caused the organization to make some hard roster choices, the Blackhawks also had Dustin Byfuglien, Andrew Ladd, Troy Brouwer, Brian Campbell, along with Hossa, Sharp, Bolland and so many others.

This was Chicago's first championship since 1961. It was also the year when Kane scored a Cup-clinching goal in overtime that only he seemed to realize had gone in.

If the Ducks weren't one of the most skilled teams on this list, they certainly were the scariest.

Anaheim led the playoffs in penalties, but thanks to the defensive tandem of Norris Trophy winners Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer and arguably the most effective shutdown line in NHL history – Rob Niedermayer, Samuel Pahlsson and Travis Moen – they only allowed 16 goals on 121 times shorthanded.

Not that they didn't rely on their skill.

Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry, who were in their second NHL season, combined for 32 points. At the other end of the spectrum was Teemu Selanne, who was in his 14th season and had 94 points in the regular season.

Anaheim also had Chris Kunitz, Dustin Penner and Andy McDonald, as well as goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere, whose overstuffed pads helped usher in the crackdown on goalie equipment.

A year after losing to Detroit in the final, Pittsburgh went back and won the rematch in seven games.

Sidney Crosby led the playoffs with 15 goals. And Evgeni Malkin, who had a playoff-leading 36 points, was named the Conn Smythe Trophy winner. But it was goalie Marc-Andre Fleury's diving save on Lidstrom with two seconds remaining in Game 7 that proved to be the difference-maker.

For the third straight year, the Panthers reached the Stanley Cup final. And this version, which added Brad Marchand and Seth Jones at the deadline to a Hall of Fame roster that already included Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett, Aaron Ekblad and Sergei Bobrovsky, was arguably the best of the three.

In a 56-game season that was affected by the pandemic, teams only played other teams within their division. The result was that you didn't really know how good anyone was until the playoffs. But once again, Tampa Bay rose to the top, with Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Victor Hedman, Steven Stamkos and Alex Killorn leading the post-season in scoring.

The COVID-19 bubble playoffs may have placed an asterisk next to the Lightning's name. But make no mistake: this championship was anything but easy. Tampa Bay players spent two months in quarantine away from their friends and family, where they were tested daily in a playoff bubble and had to play in empty rinks. Somehow, they survived, losing just six games in four rounds.

As the eighth-seeded team in the West, not much was expected of the Kings in the 2011-12. But then the playoffs started, and the underdogs beat Vancouver 4-1, swept St. Louis 4-0 and defeated Phoenix 4-1 before easily taking down New Jersey 4-2 in the final. Kings goalie Jonathan Quick, who had a 1.41 GAA, was named the Conn Smythe Trophy winner.

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