The Greatest Ending to an NHL Season
On April 5, 1970, the Montreal Canadiens and the New York Rangers would be in a tight race for the final playoff spot in the East division, which at the time was the division that held the original six teams, while the West division consisted of the six expansion teams from 1967. In each six-team division, the top four teams qualified for the Stanley Cup Playoffs, no matter the ranking in the overall standings. This is important, because heading into the final night of the season, after all of the games on Apr. 4, 1970 had been completed, the top five teams in the league were all from the East division, meaning one team in the East division was going to miss the playoffs despite being higher in the league standings than the number one team in the West division, the St. Louis Blues.
Standings at the end of Apr. 4, 1970. Source: NHL Stats
Because it was a 76-game season at the time, there were four teams who had completed their seasons, and eight teams playing their last game on April 5th. At the time, the number one tie-breaker was goals for (GF), which is why the Minnesota North Stars (now the Dallas Stars) had secured a playoff spot despite having the same number of points as the Philadelphia Flyers, as their 219+ goals were going to be better than the Flyers’ 197 goals. Because of this, the only two teams that hadn’t either clinched a playoff spot or been eliminated from the playoffs were the Montreal Canadiens and the New York Rangers.
Heading into the final day of the season, the Rangers were set to play the Red Wings, and the Canadiens were set to play the Blackhawks, both teams being amongst the best in the league. The Rangers versus Red Wings game was scheduled first, with the Canadiens playing the Blackhawks after. The Canadiens had the advantage, as there were many events that needed to occur for the Rangers to qualify for the playoffs over the Canadiens. Because the first tie-breaker is the team with more goals for, and the second tie breaker is fewer goals against, here is the list of the following events that needed to happen for the Canadiens to qualify for the playoffs:
Anything less than the Rangers winning a game and not scoring at least five goals
Rangers winning but scoring four goals or less
Rangers and Red Wings tying
Rangers losing
If the Rangers do score five or more goals and win, the Canadiens could still qualify for the playoffs with the following:
Anything more than a Canadiens loss while not matching the Rangers’ goal total
Canadiens win by any score
Canadiens tie with any score
Canadiens lose, but score enough goals in the loss to exceed the Rangers’ goals for
Essentially, from the Canadiens’ point of view, they need to hope that the Rangers score as few goals as possible. Instead, the Rangers would beat the Red Wings 9-5, about as bad an outcome as it could have gotten for Montreal, as they are now in a position to either win/tie, or score five goals against the Chicago Blackhawks, one of the best teams in the standings.
After the Rangers game had finished, the Rangers had now scored 246 goals, which was four more than the Canadiens’ 242. Since the Rangers had fewer goals against by the end of their game against the Red Wings (189 to Montreal’s 191) the Canadiens needed to score at least five goals for a total of 247 goals if they didn’t win or tie; scoring four goals and tying the Rangers with 246 goals would not have been enough to surpass the Rangers.
In the final game for the Canadiens, the score was 3-2 in favour of the Blackhawks entering the third, with a tie still in the minds of the Canadiens. However, with 9:16 left in the third period, the Blackhawks had extended their lead to 5-2. At this point, tying the game, let alone winning, was an unlikely outcome. Because of this, the Canadiens attempted to score at least three goals in order to overcome the Rangers with the tie-breaker, regardless of their identical records. In order to do this, the Canadiens would pull their goalie for the extra attacker to play 6-on-5. Upon pulling the goalie, the Blackhawks would score on the empty net; and then again, and again, and again, and again. Despite the effort, the Canadiens were unable to score a goal with the goalie pulled, and instead surrendered five empty net goals for a 10-2 loss.
Box score of game between the Montreal Canadiens and Chicago Blackhawks on Apr. 5, 1970. Source: Hockey Reference
As a result of this scenario, the Chicago Blackhawks set a new NHL record for the most empty net goals scored in one game, two more than second place, which is a tie for three goals shared among multiple teams. This is an NHL record that will likely never be broken, as the tie-breaking rules changed shortly after, where the new tie-breaking procedure after this season first favoured the team with more wins, and then the team with a higher goal differential; meaning goals for on its own no longer mattered, and teams after this and in the future will likely never find themselves in a position to pull the goalie enough times to allow five or more empty net goals.
From 1948-1949 to 1993-1994, the Montreal Canadiens would miss the playoffs just once, which was the 1969-1970 season, caused by one crazy game that had the most empty net goals of all time. When looking at the top six longest playoff appearance streaks of all time in the chart below, the Canadiens appear twice.
Top 10 longest playoff appearance streaks. Source: NHL Records
Only one season separates their 21 year playoff streak and 24 year playoff streak, where this one game prevented a 44-year long playoff streak, which would have been by far the longest in North American sports history.
The Rangers would lose to the Bruins in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in six games, and the Bruins would go on to win the Stanley Cup for the first time since 1941. The Canadiens had just won two Stanley Cups, and would win another one the following year in 1971. Despite the disappointing ending to the 1969-1970 season, the Canadiens would have one of the best decades in sports history ahead of them. In addition to the change in tie-breaking procedure, this historic ending to a season also resulted in a change to the NHL standings format to prevent the imbalance between the original six teams and the expansion teams again, where in the following season the Chicago Blackhawks would move to the West division, and the two new expansion teams, the Buffalo Sabres and Vancouver Canucks, would play in the East division.