Many people have their beliefs on what is the greatest “Cinderella” run ever but for me, it was the playoff run made by the 1990-91 edition of the Minnesota North Stars.
The Stars were struggling at the gate and on the ice. The fans of Minnesota had nearly abandoned the club with an average attendance of 7,838 in the hockey-mad state, in part due to poor on-ice performance and in part in protest to the way the owner, shopping mall magnate Norm Green, was handling the team.
The team scraped into the playoffs with a 27-39-14 record to qualify for the old "everybody in" 16 of 21 playoff format. The Stars iced a decent team on paper with key veterans like Dave Gagner, Brian Propp, Brian Bellows, Neal Broten and Bobby Smith. Jon Casey emerged as the Stars #1 goaltender and Mike Modano was in his second full NHL season.
Finishing 4th in the Norris Division meant that the Stars had to face the NHL's best club during the regular season, the Chicago Blackhawks.
Steve Larmer led the Hawks with 101 points in ’91 and emerging superstar Jeremy Roenick was close behind with 94. Ed Belfour won both the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year and the Vezina as the NHL’s best goaltender. The Hawks were heavily favored in the first round series.
After going down 2 games to 1 to the mighty Blackhawks, something happened. Nobody can really say why or how but the Stars began to play like an incredibly cohesive unit. Blind passes started finding tape, shots started finding the back of the net, and every player ratcheted up the intensity.
The Stars dominated the next three games of the series, outscoring the President’s trophy champion Blackhawks 12-2 in those games to stun the hockey world with a 4 to 2 series win.
The victory moved the Stars into a second round match up with the #2 team in the league, the St. Louis Blues. The Blues boasted the NHL’s leading goal scorer and league MVP in Brett Hull. Hull and Adam Oates were a lethal combination during the regular season with Hull putting up an incredible 86 goals and Oates picking up 115 points in only 61 games. As well, future hall-of-famer Scott Stevens anchored the blue line for St. Louis.
Buoyed by the confidence they gained against the ‘Hawks, the North Stars went right back to work, shutting down Hull, Oates and company 2-1 in game 1. St. Louis stormed back to take game 2 by a 5-2 score but the Stars proved they were for real with 5-1 and 8-4 victories back in Bloomington in games 3 and 4. The Blues battled but the Stars took them down in 6 games.
It was truly amazing. The 15th place team took out the top two teams in the league and they looked dominant in doing so. Something special was going on in the Twin Cities and the fans were starting to fill the Met Center again. This was becoming an amazing “Cinderella” run.
It didn’t get any easier at this point because now it was on to face the defending Stanley Cup champion Edmonton Oilers. The Oilers had a bit of a sub-par regular season due in large part to their best player and leader, Mark Messier, missing 27 games due to injury. The team had gone on great playoff run of their own with standout performances by Esa Tikkanen, Craig Simpson, Glenn Anderson and a rejuvenated Messier. Surely this is where the North Stars would be stopped.
Game 1 in Edmonton, the Stars had silenced the Northlands Coliseum faithful with an impressive 3-1 win. The Oilers stormed back to hammer the Stars 7-2 in game 2 and Edmonton fans believed the universe had regained order.
The rest of the way the North Stars’ magic took over. In two incredibly dominant performances they shut down the Oilers offensive weapons and put on an offensive display to rival the great Oiler teams of the 80s. 7-3 and 5-1 wins at home put the Stars in command, 3 games to 1, going back to Edmonton.
In game 5, the Stars always seemed to be one step ahead of the Oilers, and they snuffed out the defending champs 3-2.
This was truly an amazing run that the hockey world was witnessing. A team that played in front of less than 8,000 fans per game, during the regular season and finished 15th in a 21 team league, had now convincingly beaten the best team in the league, the second best team in the league and the defending champions. Not only did they beat these opponents, they did so with dominant performances and highlight reel goals.
Players like Brian Propp, Dave Gagner, Brian Bellows and Bobby Smith had elevated their games and were arguably playing the best hockey of their careers. Jon Casey was solid in the nets but the team, as a unit, was playing brilliant hockey. During the spring of ’91 the Minnesota North Stars showed that the whole is much more than the sum of the parts.
Now the Stars were faced with the talent-laden Pittsburgh Penguins. Mario Lemieux had come back from a career-threatening back injury during the regular season and had been dominant in the playoffs. Paul Coffey was coming back from a broken jaw and other stars like Mark Recchi, Kevin Stevens, Ron Francis and a young Jaromir Jagr were dominating in their own right. Tom Barrasso was at the top of his game in goal and Larry Murphy, who was acquired from the North Stars earlier during the ’90-’91 season, was doing a very effective job quarterbacking the Penguins power play.
The Stars magic continued during the first three games of the finals as they took a 2 games to 1 lead on home ice in Bloomington, holding the mighty Penguins to a single goal in the third game.
After that third game, it was too much Mario, too many super stars and Minnesota was overwhelmed. The Penguins – specifically Mario Lemieux – seemed to score at will the rest of the way, winning by counts of 5-3, 6-4 and 8-0 en route to capturing their first Stanley Cup.
The irresistible force had run in to the immovable object and was stopped.
For a team that was left for dead by the fans, ripped in half a year later to stock the San Jose Sharks and moved to Dallas in 1993, this was the most incredible, unexpected playoff run in NHL history.
