The Calgary Flames have been a disappointment recently. But this 1989 story discussed the Flames' magical season that ended with their first Stanley Cup championship.
The Calgary Flames have been a disappointment recently. But this 1989 story discussed the Flames' magical season that ended with their first Stanley Cup championship.
The Calgary Flames were a disappointment once again this season. But in this cover story from The Hockey News’ June 1, 1989 edition (Volume 42, Issue 38), veteran writer Eric Duhatschek chronicled the Flames’ first and only Stanley Cup championship in 1988-89.
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After rolling over the Vancouver Canucks, Los Angeles Kings and Chicago Blackhawks in the first three playoff rounds, the Flames beat the Montreal Canadiens in six games of the Cup final in 1989 to win their first Cup in franchise history. And the man who put the Flames together – GM Cliff Fletcher – was gushing with praise once the Flames locked up the series win over the Habs.
“It is an outstanding feeling,” Fletcher said. “Nobody has the divine right to win in sports. You’ve got to earn it. Montreal is my hometown, but I’ve been waiting for this a long time. It’s been 23 years since I left (Montreal). My mother’s two favorite players are Bob Gainey and Larry Robinson, and the Montreal Canadiens are a part of my hockey experience.
“But after 17 years, I don’t care where we win it. The impact and significance is the same. It’s a Stanley Cup for the Calgary Flames.”
The Flames came within one win of a second Cup championship in 2003-04, losing in Game 7 of the Cup final to the Tampa Bay Lightning. But in that magical 1988-89 season, legends were made – including coach Terry Crisp and veteran star forward and captain Lanny McDonald, both of whom were at their competitive peaks that post-season.
“It was a Cinderella finish,” Crisp said of the Cup final series win, before turning his attention to McDonald “(W)e also felt that Lanny was rested… We felt when you put Lanny McDonald in your lineup and the 'C' back on his chest, you could just feel your dressing room start to go. We felt tonight Lanny would give us an emotional lift, which he did.”
CALGARY’S CUP
Vol. 42, No. 38, June 1, 1989
By Eric Duhatschek
Lanny McDonald was just three years old, with little more than a five o’clock shadow, when Cliff Fletcher took his first, tentative steps in Montreal on the long road to Stanley Cup.
Thirty-three years later, there was something appropriate in the way the 1989 Cup final had ended. Fletcher’s Calgary Flames defeated the Montreal Canadiens 4-2 in game six at the Forum, in doing so, the Flames not only won the Stanley Cup for the first time — 4-2 in the best-of-seven series — they became the first team to clinch the Cup in Montreal.
Until the May 25 loss, the Canadiens were 7-0 when faced with a Cup final loss at home.
And who better than Fletcher, a native of the Montreal suburb of Ville St. Laurent who cut his managerial teeth with the Habs, to orchestrate a Cup first for his first Cup?
“It is an outstanding feeling,” said Fletcher, the only general manager in the Flames’ 17-year history. “Nobody has the divine right to win in sports. You’ve got to earn it.
“Montreal is my home town, but I’ve been waiting for this a long time. It’s been 23 years since I left (Montreal). My mother’s two favorite players are Bob Gainey and Larry Robinson, and the Montreal Canadiens are a part of my hockey experience.
“But after 17 years, I don’t care where we win it. The impact and significance is the same. It’s a Stanley Cup for the Calgary Flames.”
Fletcher’s first break in hockey came in 1956 when, as a minor hockey coach, an intermediary named Sibby Murdy introduced him to Sam Pollock.
“They wanted me to run their Jr. B team in Verdun,” said Fletcher. “That was my entrylevel job in the Montreal Canadiens’ organization-general manager of the Verdun Blues.”
Fletcher spent 10 years working part time for the Canadiens and then moved on to St. Louis, then Atlanta. And for the last nine years Calgary, as the architect of the Flames.
Fletcher did not score a goal or make a save for the Flames, but he’s arguably the team’s MVP.
He and his management team drafted Al Maclnnis, Mike Vernon, Joe Nieuwendyk, Gary Suter and Hakan Loob. Only Maclnnis, winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP, was a first-rounder. He traded for Joey Mullen and Brad McCrimmon after contract problems made them expendable in St. Louis and Philadelphia. He took a chance that the publicity surrounding Doug Gilmour — a St. Louis grand jury decided in mid-season not to pursue criminal charges in the wake of a sexual abuse civil suit against the player — would not affect Gilmour’s on-ice performance.
In the 1989 playoffs, Gilmour gave the Flames everything they didn’t get in the 1988 playoffs: Scoring, leadership and a deep-seated will to win. It’s exactly what they were looking for when they made the trade with St. Louis late last summer.
“Sixteen years, we’ve been saying, ‘Wait ‘til next year,’” said Fletcher. “Next year finally arrived. I now know how (Edmonton GM) Glen Sather and (New York Islander GM) Bill Torrey felt after winning those cups.
“I’m proud of the team. Right from the first day of training camp, our one thought was to do it this year. The team really showed a maturity it hadn’t in past years. They didn’t let adversity bother them the way it may have in previous years.
“We just had a hell of a year.”
Fletcher, normally a hands-off style of manager, took an unprecedented step following the fourth game of the Smythe Division semifinal series against the Vancouver Canucks. He issued a state-of-the-union address to his troops on the team bus.
“I just discussed that you don’t get many chances to win it,” said Fletcher. “With our team this year, this was a legitimate chance. I said they had to dig down deep every shift and not let adversity get in their way. That they had to come up with big efforts and do the job.”
Coach Terry Crisp said his players never forgot the scare the Canucks gave them — overtime of the seventh game.
“We wouldn’t let them,” said Crisp. “Every game we reminded them, ‘Vernon stopped (Stan) Smyl on a breakaway, Smyl hit the post on a wraparound.’ That was our battle cry. We ducked the bullet twice. You can’t duck it a third time.”
The message sunk in, beginning with Vernon, the Flames’ goalie and the man many pinpointed as the team’s Achilles heel.
Vernon single-handedly kept the Flames alive, his three saves on Petri Skriko, Smyl and Tony Tanti allowing them to pull out the OT win.
From then on, Vernon needed to be more steady than spectacular, but he gave the Flames all the goaltending they needed through the playoffs. He finished the year with 53 wins, 37 regular-season, 16 playoff, and the lasting admiration of his teammates.
“The way Mike Vernon played against Vancouver, you just knew we were a team of destiny,” said Nieuwendyk, “and this is our destiny.”
“Finally,” said Vernon, “I proved myself that I could go the distance, that I could win a Stanley Cup.”
As for Crisp’s future with the club, said to be in jeopardy had they lost to Vancouver, he said: “Only one man can fire me and that’s Mr. Cliff Fletcher and Mr. Cliff Fletcher told me (during the Vancouver series), ‘You’re not getting fired.’ “
After Vancouver, the Flames swept Los Angeles and beat Chicago in five to win the Campbell Conference title.
Ultimately, the Flames decided their 4-2 win in the fourth game of the finals was the turning point. Two nights earlier, they dropped a heartbreaking 3-2 double-OT loss. Ryan Walter’s goal in the 98th minute of play in the final’s only OT game came just as a penalty to Mark Hunter expired.
The Flames immediately vented their anger on referee Kerry Fraser, who said he made the bold move of calling the OT penalty because the league had urged officials to crack down on hitting from behind. Hunter had driven Hab Shayne Corson into the boards.
They could react to that loss in one of two ways: Either get mad or get even. It turned out to be the latter. Maclnnis scored his fourth goal of the playoffs, with only 1:38 remaining in game four. That was the eventual winner.
The Flames did not lose again in the series, sweeping the final three games.
“Even in the games we didn’t win, we thought we gave a good effort,” said Gilmour. “I think when we won the fourth game to tie it, that was the turning point.”
“They played with revenge from when they lost in 1986 (when Montreal beat Calgary 4-1 in the final series),” said Canadiens coach Pat Bums. “They did not want to go through it again.”
Much was made of the Canadiens’ tradition during the series. But from Calgary’s perspective, the only tradition that mattered on the last night was the one established by Fletcher when he traded for McDonald, Nov. 25, 1982.
In a storybook ending to a distinguished 16-year NHL career, McDonald returned to the game-six lineup following a three-game absence to score the goal that put the Flames ahead to stay.
The lineup move started as a concession to sentiment, but ended up as one of the smartest coaching decisions of Crisp’s career.
“Every time we put our lineup together, we do it with the intention of winning a hockey game,” explained Crisp. “Everybody asks: Is it sentiment?
“The sentiment comes after you’ve won it and after Lanny scores. It was a Cinderella finish. But we also felt that Lanny was rested. He sat out three games. He played well his other game in here. We felt when you put Lanny McDonald in your lineup and the C’ back on his chest, you could just feel your dressing room start to go.
“We felt tonight Lanny would give us an emotional lift, which he did.”
“I think you appreciate it a heck of a lot more after 16 years than you do after one or two,” said McDonald.
Afterwards, McDonald was asked, “How heavy was the Cup?”
“There isn’t a weight to it,” he replied. “You could probably carry that forever, and I think we will.”
McDonald described winning the championship as “the most peaceful feeling I’ve experienced in hockey. There is just no feeling like it. It’s something I wish a person could describe to the people outside, how much hard work it takes for 25 guys to put it all together.”
McDonald, in uniform, joined co-captains Jim Peplinski and Tim Hunter, in sweat suits, in accepting the Stanley Cup from NHL president John Ziegler. Peplinski was the odd-man-out in games four and six. Hunter missed games five and six.
“I couldn’t feel better,” Peplinski said. “It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, standing and watching, but people talk about what it means to be a team. This is what it means.”
The first Soviet to play in the NHL, Calgary’s Sergei Priakin, failed to see any action in the final. In fact, he played just once, in game four against Vancouver.
It turned out to be the swan song for Swedish right winger Hakan Loob (see page 13), who primarily for family considerations decided to return home. But it was the first of what is likely to be many playoff appearances for diminutive Theoren Fleury, the 5-foot-6, 160-pound sparkplug who was recalled from Salt Lake City of the International League.
He emerged in the playoffs to be more than a curiosity.
Not a single player on the Flames had ever experienced the thrill of winning the Cup.
“This is a long way from Rockie hockey,” said veteran defenseman Rob Ramage, who broke into the NHL with the Colorado Rockies in 1979.
“Last year, I had almost resigned myself to never winning a Stanley Cup in St. Louis, but the trade gave me a chance. Last year I had a rude awakening losing to Edmonton in the playoffs but we came back this year.
“Guys like Brian MacLellan, who was playing with Minnesota in the Norris Division late this year, they can’t believe it. We are all dialing 911.”
The Flames staged their Stanley Cup parade on May 27, two days after the final game.
In temperatures just above freezing and a steady drizzle that threatened at times to become wet snow, a crowd estimated anywhere between 20,000 and 50,000 turned out to cheer on their Cup heroes.
A reception was held at the city’s Olympic Plaza, where Calgarians duly noted that the Flame was never really extinguished in 1988. Even after it rained on their parade.
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