Welcome to the Deep Dive. If you're joining us
today, you're probably someone who loves to unpack
those specific pivotal moments where an entire
landscape seems to shift all at once. Yeah, those
really distinct turning points. Exactly. And
today we are immersing ourselves in the 2006
-2007 National Hockey League season. And our
mission for you today, based on all the historical
sources and stats we've gathered, is to explore
why this specific window in time acts as the
ultimate bridge between the old school grit of
the NHL's past and the high -flying, skill -heavy
game we know today. It really is a fascinating
transitional year to analyze. When you look at
the landscape of the league that season. You
see these incredible, almost contradicting patterns
happening all at once. Right. You have this huge
influx of legendary veteran players hitting massive
career milestones, and they're doing it right
alongside this explosive youth movement that
completely takes over the ice. And all of this
is happening while the league itself is experiencing
some major growing pains and successes, really
in the new salary cap era. Precisely. It was
a league trying to find its new identity. Let's
jump right into the foundation of that season,
because even before the puck dropped on opening
night, the league was undergoing some pretty
significant structural and cosmetic changes.
We had the salary cap bumping up to $44 million
per team. Which was a big increase for the time.
Huge. And we had a flurry of arena name changes,
too. The Savas Center became the Scottrade Center.
The MCI Center became the Verizon Center. captured
everyone's attention, happened out in California.
The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim officially became
just the Anaheim Ducks. And that wasn't just
a simple marketing tweak, you know, just to sell
some new jerseys. This was a complete franchise
maturation. You have to remember, when the team
was formed back in 1993, they were literally
named after the Disney movie. Right, the Emilio
Estevez movie. Exactly. They were owned by the
Walt Disney Company. So dropping the Mighty and
introducing a completely new logo and color scheme
before the 06 -07 season was really the franchise.
declaring a clean break from their original owners.
They were stepping out of that Hollywood shadow.
Yeah, they were demanding to be taken seriously
as a traditional heavyweight hockey club. They
completely shed that underdog movie script persona.
And as we'll get into later, the timing of that
rebrand could not have been more perfect. But
before we get to the playoffs, I want to look
at the actual mechanics of the gameplay that
year. There were some really interesting statistical
shifts happening on the ice. Oh, absolutely.
The numbers from that year are fascinating. For
one, there were far fewer penalties called compared
to the previous year. It averaged out to about
398 per team. But counterintuitively, overall
goal scoring actually went down and shutout spiked
to 150 for the year. Right. Yet at the exact
same time, even strength goals went up to 4 ,715.
So help me synthesize this. What was the actual
product looking like for you if you were sitting
in the arena? Well, you're looking at a game
that is naturally recalibrating itself. The previous
season, 2005 -2006, was the first one back after
the lost lockout year. The year there was no
hockey at all. Right. And when they came back,
the league had cracked down incredibly hard on
obstruction fouls. You know, hooking, holding,
the clutching and grabbing that really bogged
down the late 90s. It was basically a parade
to the penalty box that first year back. It was.
Because players weren't used to the strict enforcement,
we saw a massive unnatural spike in power plays,
which obviously inflated overall scoring. But
by 06 -07, the players had adjusted. They weren't
committing as many of those obstruction penalties.
So fewer power plays means fewer total goals.
Exactly. But because the game was still flowing
freely without that old dead puck area interference,
teams were generating much more offense during
regular 5 -on -5 play. The speed was back. It
was just a healthier, much more organic version
of the sport. Yeah, defensemen were being forced
to defend with their feet and their positioning
rather than just, you know, water skiing behind
forwards with their sticks. That increased 5
-on -5 flow completely changes the rhythm for
the guys in the crease, too. When you aren't
constantly shifting between the penalty kill
and the power play, goalies can actually settle
into a groove. And with 150 shutouts across the
league, they clearly figured something out. It
felt like we were watching an absolute masterclass
in goaltending that year. Specifically with that
legendary duel for the Vizina Trophy between
Martin Brodeur and Roberto Luongo. Oh, it's a
dead heat between two absolute heavyweights in
their prime. Both Berger in New Jersey and Luongo
in Vancouver were putting together career -defining
campaigns. And they weren't just battling each
other. They were chasing a ghost. Bernie Parent.
Bernie Parent. They were both closing in on his
record of 47 wins in a single season, a record
that had stood entirely untouched since 1974.
Over three decades of hockey and nobody could
touch 47 wins until this season where they both
basically get there. Luongo finishes the year
with a staggering 47 wins, tying parent, but
Berdure just keeps going. He was on an absolute
mission. On April 3rd, he ties it in a shootout
against Ottawa. Two days later, he breaks it
with his 48th win against the Flyers. Berdure
takes the Vizina. Luongo is the runner -up. But
looking at the data, the environment they were
playing in was fundamentally different than the
70s, right? How much of an asterisk goes next
to that 48 -win mark? It's a massive contextual
difference, and it completely changes how we
evaluate eras. Bernie Parent got 47 wins in an
era where if a regular season game was tied at
the end of overtime, it just ended. Everyone
went home with a tie. Right. But in the 2006
-2007 season, the NHL had fully integrated the
shootout. Every single game was forced to produce
a winner and a loser. So those extra wins were
essentially manufactured by eliminating ties
altogether. Precisely. Brodeur had 43 regulation
and overtime wins, plus five shootout wins to
get to 48. Lurango had 47 total wins, also bolstered
by the shootout. So it doesn't take away from
the phenomenal, grueling seasons both men had.
No, absolutely not. But when you compare 48 wins
in 2007 to 47 wins in 1974, you have to acknowledge
that Brodeur had a structural advantage the parents
simply didn't have. It's a great reminder that
statistics don't exist in a vacuum. But even
without the shootout padding the stats, the sheer
volume of career milestones this season is staggering.
It felt like every week, a different legend was
rewriting the history books. The 2006 -2007 season
was essentially a victory lap for the generation
of superstars who defined the 1990s. They were
all cementing their legacies at exactly the same
time. Just look at the 600 -goal club. Right.
Going into the year, only 14 players in the entire
history of the NHL had ever reached that mark.
And Brendan Shanahan didn't even make us wait.
Opening night, October 5th, his very first game
debuting for the New York Rangers, he scores
twice and becomes player number 15 to hit 600.
And then, just over a month later, Jeremy Jagger
hits 600 goals too, making them the first teammates
in NHL history to reach the 600 -goal mark in
the exact same season. And Jagger's milestones
that year just kept compounding. He passed Jerry
Curry for the most points by a European born
player. He became the 12th player to score 1
,500 career points. He tied Mike Gartner's record
for the most consecutive 30 -goal seasons at
15. The sustained excellence required to put
up those numbers in the clushing and grabbing
90s and then still be dominating in the speed
-driven post -lockout era is just incredible.
And you also had Joe Sackett joining Shanahan
and Jagger in the 600 -goal club later in the
year while simultaneously hitting his own 1 ,500
-point milestone. Three guys hitting 600 goals
in one season is wild, but the 500 -goal club
was basically a turnstile that year. It really
was. Matt Sundin becomes the first Swede to hit
.500. Timu Salan becomes the second Finnish player
to hit it. Peter Bondra and Mark Recchi both
cross the .500 mark. And then Mike Madano hits
.500 in mid -March and four nights later scores
his .503rd, officially passing Joe Mullen for
the most goals ever scored by an American -born
player. When you read that list of names, Shanahan,
Jagger, Sackick, Sundin, Salan, Madano, it's
royalty. But what makes this season so compelling?
is the reality of it. The push and pull between
the eras. Yes, because while the old guard was
taking that victory lap, the foundation of the
league was being completely taken over by a youth
movement that refused to wait its turn. It was
a total changing of the guard, spearheaded by
a 19 -year -old Sidney Crosby. Crosby's sophomore
campaign is one of the most paradigm -shifting
seasons we've ever seen. Most 19 -year -olds
in the NHL are highly protected. They play limited
minutes against lower -tier competition while
they physically mature. Crosby went out and put
up 36 goals and 84 assists, 120 points. Becoming
the youngest player in history to win the Art
Ross. And passing Wayne Gretzky. to become the
youngest to reach 200 career points. He just
completely cleaned house at the NHL Awards, taking
home the Hart and the Pearson alongside the Art
Ross. But beyond the hardware, what did a teenager
dominating to that degree do to the front offices
around the league? It proved conclusively that
the NHL was now a young man's game. Before the
lockout, the prevailing wisdom was that you needed
man strength to survive the grueling physical
toll of the league. You didn't peak until you
were 25 or 26. But the new rules completely opened
up the ice for speed, agility, and pure skill.
Suddenly, a teenager could dictate the pace of
play. And crucially, in a salary cap world, teams
realized they desperately needed entry -level
contracts to compete. Getting elite production
from guys making rookie money became the ultimate
market inefficiency. And Pittsburgh hit the absolute
jackpot with that because it wasn't just Crosby.
You had Evgeny Malkin winning the Calder, becoming
the first player in 89 years to score a goal
in each of his first six games. You had 18 -year
-old Jordan Stahl becoming the youngest player
to ever record a hat -trick. And out in Colorado,
Paul Stastny set a rookie record with a 20 -game
point streak, breaking a record previously held
by Timu Salam. Think about the poetry of that.
Salan hits 500 goals in the exact same season
that a rookie comes along and breaks his longstanding
scoring streak record. It's the perfect passing
of the torch. While the torch was being passed,
the actual product on the ice was producing some
incredibly bizarre, chaotic anomalies. Because
while the skill level was through the roof, the
grit certainly hadn't disappeared. Not at all.
Let's look at February 22, 2007. Eight separate
games went into overtime on the exact same night.
Setting a single -day NHL record. And the intensity
of those matchups was off the charts. Four of
them went to shootouts, including a game between
the Ottawa Senators and the Buffalo Sabres that
is still talked about today. It was an absolute
war that culminated in a massive line brawl following
a late, controversial hit on Sabres co -captain
Chris Drury. It resulted in 100 penalty minutes
and three game misconduct ejections. So you have
a game played with the utmost physical hostility,
ultimately decided by the highly sanitized skill
competition of a shootout. It perfectly encapsulates
the identity crisis the league was navigating.
And that tension between skill and violence came
to a very dark head just a few weeks later. On
March 11th, Chris Simon of the Islanders catches
Rangers center Ryan Hallweg in the face with
his stick, resulting in a 25 -game suspension.
It was an NHL record suspension at the time,
and it was a defining moment for league discipline.
The front office was sending a very clear, unambiguous
message. Which was what, exactly? We want a faster,
highly skilled game, and we are going to severely
punish reckless violence that crosses the line.
Simon missed the end of the year. the playoffs,
and the start of the following season. The league
was drawing a line in the sand regarding player
safety. When we zoom out and look at the standings
as we approach the postseason, the parity created
by that hard salary cap is just glaring. The
year prior, the Stanley Cup final was Carolina
against Edmonton. But in 06 -07, neither of those
teams even qualified for the playoffs. The margin
for error had just evaporated. Completely evaporated.
The Carolina Hurricanes became the first defending
champion to miss the playoffs entirely since
the 95 -96 Devils. When you win the cup, your
players' demand raises. In a cap system, you
can't keep... And the Western Conference was
just an absolute meat grinder. The Detroit Red
Wings win the Central with 113 points, tying
the Sabres for the league lead. You had four
teams in the West with 107 points or more. And
don't forget the Colorado Avalanche. They finished
with 95 points, breaking a Montreal record from
1970 for the most points by a team to miss the
playoffs. 95 points and you're going golfing
in April. Just brutal. It set the stage for a
phenomenally grueling playoff tournament. Every
single matchup in the West was a heavyweight
bout. Which brings us to the first round, where
Vancouver and Dallas play a game that refused
to end. April 11th, Game 1. They go into a fourth
overtime period before Vancouver finally ends
it. the sixth longest game in NHL history. The
physical and mental toll of a game like that
is almost impossible to quantify. Four overtimes
means they played the equivalent of more than
two entire hockey games back to back. No long
intermissions, just the constant suffocating
pressure of sudden death hockey for hours on
end. It's the ultimate test of conditioning and
focus. But the team that really navigated that
Western Conference gauntlet with efficiency was
the newly minted Anaheim Ducks. They run through
Minnesota, Vancouver, and Detroit to punch their
ticket to the Stanley Cup final, meeting the
Ottawa Senators from the east. And this matchup
had so many layers of historical significance.
You had an ascendant Sun Belt team taking on
a traditional Canadian market, desperate to bring
the Cup back north. But the historical detail
that really stands out is that Game three of
this series marked the return of the Stanley
Cup final to the city of Ottawa for the first
time in over 80 years. The last time Ottawa hosted
a finals game was April 13th, 1927. Yes. Between
the original Senators and the Bruins. And the
sheer cosmic alignment of the universe here.
There was a 99 -year -old man named Russell Williams
in the building for that 2007 game who had actually
been in attendance for that previous finals game
80 years prior. It's one of those beautiful threads
of continuity that makes sports so compelling.
He spans almost the entire history of the NHL
in one lifetime. And unfortunately for Russell
and the Senators, while they did win that specific
Game 3, they just couldn't overcome Anaheim's
roster over the course of the series. No, the
Ducks were simply too deep, too physically imposing,
and too skilled. They took the series in five
games. The Ducks hoist the Cup. The very first
Stanley Cup victory for the franchise, and the
first time a team from California ever won it
all. Scott Niedermeyer takes home the Kahn -Smith.
And you have that incredibly emotional moment
of Timu Solan, after all those years and all
those goals, finally getting to lift the cup.
It was the absolute validation of everything
Anaheim had built. It proved definitively that
the NHL's southern expansion strategy could produce
a genuine, sustainable powerhouse. You didn't
just have to survive in a warm weather market.
You could build a legacy there. The Anaheim rebrand,
shedding the movie tie -in. building a heavy,
dominant roster, it established a blueprint for
nontraditional markets moving forward. And the
entire season really was just vibrating with
that kind of history, big and small. We saw the
All -Star game return to Dallas after a two -year
hiatus with Danny Breer taking MVP. We saw Tampa
Bay teammates Vincent Lecavalier and Martin St.
Louis both cross the 100 -point mark, with Lecavalier
dropping 52 goals to win the Rocket Richard.
We even had Guillaume La Tendresse in Montreal
becoming the first player in NHL history to ever
wear the number 84 in a regular season game.
It's the perfect microcosm of the year. From
New Jersey numbers to new franchise identities
to new offensive paradigms. The 2006 -2007 season
was the exact inflection point where the old
guard handed the keys of the league over to the
next generation. 48 wins by a goalie, 120 points
from a teenager, an avalanche of 500 and 600
goal milestones, and a Stanley Cup hoisted in
the California sun. It really was the year the
past and the future collided on the ice. It was.
And when you look at how drastically the rule
changes allowed teenagers to immediately dominate,
it leaves you with a really provocative thought
about the ripple effects on the sport as a whole.
I am always here for a ripple effect. What are
you thinking? We talked about how the removal
of the clutching and grabbing allowed a 19 -year
-old Sidney Crosby to thrive, proving it was
a young man's game. But think about how that
realization permanently altered youth hockey
development in scouting. Right. If front offices
suddenly realized they needed smaller, faster
teenagers on entry -level contracts to win, the
entire pipeline of the sport had to change. Exactly.
It makes you wonder, did that shift toward optimizing
kids for speed and specialized systems at age
14 or 15 come at the cost of the raw physical
creativity we saw from the 90s era players? We
built a faster league, but did we inadvertently
manufacture a more robotic pipeline of talent
to feed it? Now there is a thought to mull over.
Did the quest for speed fundamentally change
how we build a hockey player from the ground
up? That is all the time we have for today's
Deep Dive. We've taken you through the milestones,
the chaos, and the history of the 2006 -2007
NHL season. Thanks for joining us and keep diving
deep.