Welcome back to the deep dive. You know, before
we started recording today, I was actually trying
to come up with the perfect title and description
to summarize this deep dive for our Apple feed.
Oh, yeah. What did you land on? Well, I wanted
to make sure we hit the right SEO keyword so
people actually find it. So I was thinking something
like the wild west of the NHL season 1992 -94.
Okay, I like that. It sets the scene perfectly.
Right. And for the description, I mean, you have
to highlight the biggest stories. So it would
definitely focus on Mario Lemieux and his unbelievable
scoring run. And, of course, the 100th anniversary
of the Stanley Cup. Oh, absolutely. You really
can't talk about this era without hitting those
milestones. Exactly. So that is precisely what
we're zeroing in on today for you guys listening.
We are putting a truly legendary transition period
under the microscope, specifically that historic
92 to 93 campaign. It really is a fascinating
pivot point for the sport. It is the fulcrum.
If you look at the timeline of professional hockey,
this is the year that bridges the old school,
regionally focused game and the modern multinational
juggernaut we know today. Yeah, when you dig
into the mechanics of this specific season, it
reads like a blueprint for modern sports business.
but executed with this chaotic energy of the
early 90s. Chaotic is the perfect word for it.
You have the introduction of entirely new franchises,
which diluted the talent pool. You have labor
disputes that completely altered the schedule.
Right. And this massive clash of cultures, traditionalists
who wanted to keep the game regional, fighting
against visionaries who, you know, just wanted
that national television money. It's an incredible
case study in how a sport physically rebuilds
itself on the fly. So let's start with that physical
rebuild, because the actual map of the league
changed drastically. We saw two brand new clubs
join, bringing the total up to 24 teams. The
Ottawa Senators and the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Right. Now, bringing a team back to Ottawa makes
traditional hockey sense. But putting a franchise
in Tampa Bay in 1992, that felt like a massive
gamble on a non -traditional market. Was that...
just pure hubris from the league? Or did they
actually have a concrete strategy for putting
ice in a place that didn't even have a hockey
culture yet? Well, it was a calculated risk.
It was spearheaded by Phil and Tony Esposito,
but really it was the league testing the waters
for a much larger strategy. What kind of strategy?
They wanted to see if they could manufacture
a market entirely from scratch. Look, the NHL
had been watching the NBA and the NFL secure
these massive, multimillion -dollar national
television contracts. The big money. Exactly.
And the NHL realized that to get that kind of
money, they couldn't just be a regional Northeast
and Canadian sport anymore. Right. They needed
a bigger footprint. They needed the American
South. Tampa was the beachhead for that entire
philosophy. And to fill out those new rosters,
you have the expansion draft, which we know always
strips depth from the existing teams. But what
I find even more chaotic than the expansion is
the schedule itself. Oh, the schedule was a mess.
Following that 10 -day player strike in April
of 92, they bumped the schedule up to 84 games.
And they didn't just add standard home and away
games. They took these high stakes regular season
games and dropped them into neutral sites. Yeah,
that was wild. Just dropping a regular season
game in Miami or Dallas in 92. Was that seen
as visionary at the time or did the traditionalists
just think it was a total gimmick? Oh, the traditionalists
absolutely loathed it. You really have to remember
the culture of the sport at the time. Coaches
hated it because the logistics were just a nightmare.
I bet. The league partnered with a marketing
firm to host. these games in 15 different cities
that didn't have their own franchises. So suddenly
you have teams flying into places like Peoria,
Illinois or Sacramento or Halifax. And they're
playing on ice surfaces that were, frankly, not
always up to professional standards. I can only
imagine the complaints from the goaltenders trying
to track a puck on soft ice in a random arena
in the middle of a Florida heat wave. Exactly.
But from a business perspective, it was a brilliant
piece of market research. A bit messy, sure,
but brilliant. How so? It was effectively a massive
litmus test for future expansion. They were dropping
the best players in the world into Phoenix, Atlanta,
Dallas, and Miami, and then just measuring the
gate receipts and local television ratings. Ah,
so they were scouting locations. Precisely. And
it's no coincidence that all four of those cities
eventually became the sites of NHL expansion
or relocation. But, you know, it did add an incredible
layer of physical exhaustion to an already grueling
84 -game schedule. And structurally, this was
the grand finale of an era, too. It was the final
season of the Wales and Campbell conferences.
Yes. The very last time we'd see the Adams, Patrick,
Norris, and Smythe divisions. Which is a crucial
cultural shift. Yeah. The old division names
honored the history and the builders of the sport.
Right. But television executives hate insider
jargon. That makes sense. If you're trying to
sell the game to a casual fan in Texas, explaining
what a Smythe division is, it's just a hurdle.
Yeah, you lose them. Moving to the Eastern and
Western conferences, with Atlantic and Central
divisions, it was a deliberate sanitization of
the league's history to make it more digestible
for a mainstream American audience. It's just
wild to think about. While the league was experimenting
with all these corporate logistics off the ice,
the actual product on the ice was completely
unhinged. Oh, it was a totally different game.
The goal horns were basically melting this year.
The 92 -93 season averaged 7 .25 goals per game.
Let that sink in. Yeah. Yeah, to put that into
perspective for anyone listening who watches
today's game, where a 4 -3 finish feels like
a barn burner. 7 .25 goals is pure fantasy. We
saw 21 players reach the 100 -point plateau.
Incredible. 14 players scored 50 or more goals.
Why was the scoring so profoundly elevated this
specific year? It was really a perfect storm
of systemic factors. First, as you mentioned
earlier, the expansion draft. Right. When you
add two new teams, you are pulling 40 -plus professional
players out of the existing ecosystem. The top
-tier talent, your Gretzky's, Lemieux, Weissermann's,
they don't get exposed in the draft. You're protected.
Exactly. The guys who get drafted are the third
-pairing defensemen and the backup goaltenders.
So the defensive depth across the entire league
is instantly diluted. Instantly. You essentially
had American Hockey League level defensemen suddenly
tasked with shutting down Hall of Fame forwards
every single night. That is a recipe for disaster.
The talent disparity between the top six forwards
and the bottom six defensemen had never been
wider. And the goaltending equipment wasn't exactly
what it is today either. Not at all. Goalies
in 93 were still wearing relatively small pads
compared to the massive hyper -engineered gear
we see today. Right. And furthermore, the tactical
evolution of the game hadn't caught up to the
skill of the players yet. Coaches hadn't adopted
that suffocating neutral zone trap that would
ultimately strangle the game in the late 90s.
So the ice was just wide open. Incredibly open.
It was run and gun, high risk, high reward hockey.
Goaltenders were essentially facing a firing
squad every night because the defensive systems
to protect them just hadn't been invented yet.
And feasting on that open ice was Mario Lemieux.
You look at his start to that season and he's
not just playing well. He is on pace to challenge
Wayne Gretzky's mythical record of 92 goals in
a season. It's untouchable. Operating on a totally
different plane of existence. But then right
in the middle of this historic run, you have
a storyline that completely transcends the sport.
Lemieux is diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma.
It is one of the most remarkable and frankly
sobering moments in sports history. Yeah. You
have a player at the... absolute apex of his
physical ability, dominating the hardest, fastest
team sport on Earth. And suddenly he's pulled
off the ice to face a life -threatening illness.
We really need to pause on the gravity of that
for a second. To go from chasing Gretzky to undergoing
aggressive radiation treatments, it's devastating.
He misses 24 games. And the physical toll of
radiation is an exhaustion that most of us can't
even fathom. And yet, not only does he come back
that same season, but he goes on a tear. That
defies medical logic. Defies logic is right.
He didn't just come back. He completely dismantled
the league upon his return. Let's just look at
the pure math of what he accomplished. Okay.
When you finish the season with 69 goals and
91 assists for 160 points. Wow. And he did that
in just 60 games. To give that context, every
other player in the top five and Lee scoring
legends like. Pat LaFontaine, Ada Boats, Steve
Iserman. They played a full, grueling 84 -game
schedule to get their points. So he basically
spotted the rest of the league a two -month head
start while undergoing cancer treatment and still
beat them all for the Art Ross Trophy. Yes. It
remains the third highest point -per -game average
in a season in league history. That is absurd.
And you have to contrast Lemieux's elegant, seemingly
effortless playing style with the brutal, grinding
physical nature of the sport at that time. Lots
of clutching and grabbing. He was constantly
targeted, constantly slashed, and yet he still
dominated. He understandably won the Hart Trophy
as MVP, the Pearson Award from his peers, and
the Masterton Trophy for perseverance. I would
argue it remains the single greatest individual
season in the history of professional team sports.
It really makes you wonder what his final numbers
would have been if he had played. all 84 games.
You might have actually caught Gretzky. He really
might have. And speaking of Gretzky, there is
a real changing of the guard happening here,
too. For the first time in his career, Gretzky
didn't finish in the top three in scoring due
to a severe back injury. Right. And while the
established stars were dealing with health issues,
you had rookies doing things we will likely never
see again. Timu Salam, the finish flash. debuts
for the winnipeg jets salan's rookie season is
just an untouchable artifact of this era he scored
76 goals and tallied 132 points 76 goals for
a rookie it's a mark that no one has even come
close to touching in over 30 years and they likely
never will given how defensive the modern game
is what made him so unstoppable what made salan
so lethal was his explosive skating In an era
where defensemen were big, slow, and relied on
hooking and holding, Salam could just blow past
them. It was a complete paradigm shift in how
speed could be weaponized in the NHL. This was
also the year Eric Lindros finally made his debut
in Philly, right? After that massive summer standoff
with Quebec. Yes, exactly. That trade completely
shifted the power dynamics of the league for
the next decade, didn't it? Absolutely. Lindros,
refusing to play for the team that drafted him,
was a massive moment of player empowerment, which
was incredibly rare in the NHL at the time. Right.
Guys just didn't do that. Quebec essentially
held him for ransom and walked away with Peter
Forsberg, Ron Hextall, Mike Ricci, multiple draft
picks, and $15 million in cash. A king's ransom.
That single transaction laid the foundation for
the Colorado Avalanche dynasty. It showed that
one generational talent could essentially finance
an entire franchise's rebuild if they leveraged
it correctly. It's just nonstop volatility everywhere
you look. You check the team standings that year.
The Pittsburgh Penguins win 17 consecutive games,
setting a record. Meanwhile, the San Jose Sharps
tie the record for the longest losing streak
at 17 games and set a record with 71 losses overall.
The definition of haves and have -nots. Exactly.
Extreme haves and extreme have -nots. And all
of this chaos bleeds right into the 1993 Stanley
Cup playoffs, which carried an immense amount
of historical weight because it was the 100th
anniversary of the Stanley Cup itself. The centennial
anniversary brought an entirely new level of
pressure to the postseason. Every player wore
a commemorative patch. And the league finally
managed to get the playoffs broadcast on American
Network Television via ABC alongside ESPN. A
huge deal for them. Massive. This was their big
chance to showcase the sport to a much broader
audience. And the tournament delivered. It was
characterized by an incredible number of overtime
games, 28 in total. Unbelievable drama. But when
you talk about pressure and overtime in 1993,
you are talking about one team. The Montreal
Canadiens. Oh, yeah. They didn't just play in
overtime. They won 10 overtime games. That is
an NHL record. They string together 11 consecutive
playoff wins and end up defeating a healthy Wayne
Gretzky in the LA Kings in the finals. That run
by Montreal is the stuff of hockey myth. And
it really centers on one player. Their goaltender,
Patrick Roy. The legend. We talked earlier about
how goaltenders were struggling in this high
-scoring era. Roy was the exception because he
was actively perfecting the butterfly style of
goaltending. Right, he was revolutionizing the
position. While other goalies were still standing
up and trying to kick out their pads, Roy was
aggressively taking away the lower half of the
net. During that 10 -game overtime winning streak,
his psychological dominance over opposing shooters
was just... palpable. He was in their heads.
Totally in their heads. He won the Conn Smythe
trophy as playoff MVP, and rightfully so. He
had that famous wink at Thomas Sandstrom in the
finals. Just the sheer swagger of it. But there's
a statistic attached to this Montreal victory
that hangs over the sport even today. That was
the Canadians' 24th Stanley Cup, which leads
the league. But 1993 remains the very last time
that any Canadian team has won the Cup. That's
wild to think about. Over three decades later,
the drought continues. It is a statistic that
haunts Canadian hockey fans, but it also reflects
the business realities we discussed earlier.
The shift in focus. Exactly. The expansion into
the American South, the shift in television revenues,
the economic disadvantage of the Canadian dollar
in the mid -90s. All of these factors began to
tilt the competitive balance away from the traditional
northern markets, which perfectly segues into
the most consequential shift of the entire season.
Right, because it is fascinating that while guys
like Roy and Lemieux are putting up these magical,
untouchable performances on the ice, the owners
in the boardroom were actually terrified about
the financial stability of the league. Terrified
is an understatement. That tension is exactly
what led to the summer of 92 and the eventual
boardroom coup. The players strike. in April
of 1992, even though it only lasted 10 days,
deeply spooked the ownership. The owners looked
at the rising player salaries, driven partly
by that Lindros mega deal and some free agency
tweaks, and they looked at their relatively weak
television contracts compared to the NBA and
NFL. And they panicked. They realized they were
falling behind. They realized the NHL was still
operating like a gate driven regional boys club.
So they decide they need a wartime consigliere.
They replaced John Ziegler, who had been the
NHL president for 15 years and was seen as too
cozy with the players union. Right. They bring
in Gil Stein on an interim basis. But the tectonic
shift happens on February 1st, 1993. Enter Gary
Bettman. Yes. The owners poached Gary Bettman
directly from the NBA. David Stearns, right -hand
man over there, and a key architect of the NBA's
salary cap. A numbers guy. Exactly. And they
named him the first ever NHL commissioner. But
did the owners really think hiring an NBA guy,
someone who didn't come up through the traditional
hockey ranks, was going to go over well with
a deeply entrenched traditionalist hockey culture?
They didn't care about the hockey culture. Wow.
They cared about the bottom line. Bittman's mandate
was explicitly clear. achieve labor peace, institute
a salary cap to control escalating costs, and
secure a massive national television deal in
the United States. The holy trinity for owners.
Exactly. He was hired to drag the NHL into the
modern corporate sports landscape, kicking and
screaming if necessary. And the irony of being
hired to achieve, quote unquote, labor peace
is that his tenure would go on to be defined
by multiple devastating labor lockouts, including
the cancellation of an entire season a decade
later. It's the ultimate paradox of his administration.
He achieved the financial growth the owners desperately
wanted. Franchise valuation skyrocketed, the
footprint of the game expanded globally, and
the television money eventually flowed. But at
what cost? The cost of that growth was fundamentally
altering the relationship between the players
and the league and transitioning the sport into
a heavily structured corporate entity. It's just
incredible how many firsts and lasts were packed
into this single calendar year. You have the
last Canadian Cup win, the first commissioner.
The transition from the Smythe and Norris divisions
to the Eastern and Western conferences. You even
have the last games for four of the five remaining
players who were still grandfathered in to play
without helmets. Guys like Randy Carlisle and
Rod Langway. It was the definitive end of the
game's Wild West era. From the rule changes trying
to curb bench clearing brawls by introducing
the instigator penalty. to the sheer volume of
points being scored before defensive systems
suffocated the ice. It really was a singular
moment in time. It was a season where the pure,
unbridled skill of the players collided with
the sudden, harsh realities of modern sports
economics. You look at the standing, the stats,
the boardroom drama, it is a perfect hockey time
capsule. Which brings us to a final thought for
you to chew on today. As we look back at the
raw scoring frenzy of the 92 -93 season where
21 guys hit 100 points and goalies were left
out to dry, you can't help but wonder about the
evolution of the sport. It's a great question.
Are the heavily coached, trap -style defensive
strategies and shot -blocking systems of modern
hockey stifling the raw offensive talent we witnessed
back then? Or are today's players simply more
well -rounded, making it impossible for any single
player to dominate the way Lemieux or Salan did?
It's tough to say. What would it actually take
structurally in today's NHL to see another season
with 21 players hitting the 100 -point mark?
It's something to mull over the next time you're
watching a tight, heavily structured 2 -1 game.
Thanks for joining us on this deep dive, and
keep asking the big questions.