How do you mean they won 9 regular season championships? They finished first in '30, '31, '33, '38, '39. One of those was of those was closed out with a Cup, so 1/5.
By comparison, Morenz's Habs finished first in '28, '29, '32 and were knocked out of the playoffs all three times -- 0/3.
The most interesting run of years for the purposes of this conversation:
Year | 1st place | Eliminated by | Cup champion |
1928 | Canadiens | Maroons (semis 0-1-1, OT elimination) | Rangers |
1929 | Canadiens | Bruins (semis 0-3) | Bruins |
1930 | Bruins | Canadiens (finals 0-2) | Canadiens |
1931 | Bruins | Canadiens (semis 2-3, OT elimination) | Canadiens |
1932 | Canadiens | Rangers (semis 1-3) | Maple Leafs |
1933 | Bruins (tie*) | Maple Leafs (semis 2-3, OT elimination)
* Detroit also eliminated in the semis | Rangers |
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During this period between expansion and WWII, teams that managed to run the table from a 1st place finish to the Cup usually did so by dodging bullets in OT:
- 1927 - Ottawa beat Boston 2-0-2 in the Final when Frank Calder called both OT games ties (a personal decision relating to ice conditions), and then refused to extend the series to avoid accusations of game-fixing. Ottawa's second win, mathematically clinching the series, was the one where the Bruins' frustration spilled over and Billy Coutu ended up getting banned for life.
- 1936 - Detroit won the playoffs in a walk
- 1937 - Detroit advanced in the semis on a 3OT goal in the decisive 5th game
- 1939 - Boston advanced in the semis on a 3OT goal in the decisive 7th game
If those OT breaks go the other way, we get 1928, 1931, 1933 results. All in all, it seems to have broken pretty evenly both ways. It was an interesting era in terms of playoff series length causing everything to hinge on a very small number of plays... even more so than in the total-goals era where a series might be all but over after a Game 1 blowout.
In regard to Shore's individual playoff performances, years ago I wrote a game-by-game breakdown (mercifully not deleted in the purge) which can be found
here. I linked the summary post, but the individual season/game recaps can be found in the preceding pages. In sum, I found that there were two playoffs where Shore's performance fell flat:
- 1933, when he was just quiet by his standards
- 1936, where he infamously hit the ref with the puck and then threw it into the stands (the puck, not the ref). Shore's only penalties in the series were a minor earlier that game (2 PP goals against) and that Unsportsmanlike minor (3 PP goals against). The rest of the series, with Shore on the ice, Boston outscored Toronto 6-3. Final goal totals: 8-6 for Toronto.
I believe that 1936 meltdown is the main source of Shore's reputation for playoff penalties. While he certainly was a high-PIM, agitating type player, he was pretty deliberate about keeping that behavior confined to late-game situations and blowouts. During tight games he took penalties at a normal rate for any 60-minute defenseman, and they didn't link cleanly to game or series outcomes. The emphasis on his temper seems to come from Boston getting shellacked in the 1936 incident, where the Bruins had something like a 75.00 GAA on the penalty kill.