Imagine being so incredibly dominant at your
job that you shatter every record in the book.
You're just this completely unstoppable force.
You're making everyone else look bad. Exactly.
You render your competitors entirely irrelevant.
You have built a flawless machine. Yeah. And
then right at the peak of your glory, you are
completely derailed by an intern who literally
just showed up on the job. Which is the worst
feeling. It is. And that, in a nutshell, is the
essence. Of the 1970 -71 NHL season. It really
is. Today, we are bringing you a very special
deep dive into the source material. We've got
a comprehensive stack of notes and articles covering
this specific chaotic National Hockey League
season. There is so much to cover here. There
is. We're looking at the Boston Bruins' record
-shattering year, some truly bizarre playoff
format controversies, and the completely chaotic
behind -the -scenes drama of the Montreal Canadiens.
It's a season defined by massive structural shifts
and just extreme contrast. Well, set the landscape
for us. Where are we at in hockey history here?
Well, to set the landscape for you, this is the
54th season of the NHL. We're looking at a 14
-team league. Everyone is... grinding through
a 78 -game schedule. Which is a long season.
Very long. And the league is heavily into its
expansion era. They're bringing in the Buffalo
Sabres and the Vancouver Canucks this year. Right.
Two brand -new franchises. Yeah, and they place
both of them into the East Division. So that
makes the divisions uneven, right? Exactly. So
to balance the numbers, the league takes the
Chicago Blackhawks, who are a perennial powerhouse,
and moves them over to the West Division. Which
has huge implications later. Massive implications.
Oh, and just as a fun historical footnote, the
Oakland Seals get a corporate rebrand and become
the California Golden Seals. Gotta love the Golden
Seals. Definitely. Okay, let's unpack this. Because
to really appreciate the upsets that happen later
in this deep dive, we have to start with the
blueprint of absolute terrifying dominance. The
big bad Bruins. The big bad Bruins. I was looking
through the regular season stat sheets for Boston
this year and my jaw... They're ridiculous. They
put up 57 victories. They accumulated 121 points.
But here is the number that just broke my brain.
The goals. They scored 399 goals. Yeah. That
isn't just a record. They beat the previous team's
scoring record by nearly 100 goals. It doesn't
even make sense. How is that even mathematically
possible? Well, what's fascinating here is how
the NHL structured the schedule that year. Which
actually makes those numbers even more impressive,
if you can believe it. Wait, really? How so?
For the 1970 -71 season, the league utilized
a perfectly balanced schedule. Meaning what,
exactly? That meant every single team played
every other team in the league exactly six times.
Three times at home, three times on the road.
Oh, wow. So you can't look at Boston's 399 goals
and say, oh, well, they were just beating up
on a weak division. Right, right. They were systematically
dismantling every single roster in the NHL with
equal prejudice. That is wild. And the individual
stats look like a typo. Oh, absolutely. You have
Phyllis Bozzito setting a brand new record for
the most goals in a single season with 76. And
the most points with 152. Nobody had ever touched
numbers like that. And then there's Bobby Orr.
I mean, Orr wasn't just playing defense. He was
essentially controlling the entire flow of the
game, right? Orr completely redefined what it
meant to be a defenseman. Yeah. He takes home
his second consecutive Hart Trophy for League
MVP that year. And he does it by setting an NHL
record for assists. With 102 assists. Exactly.
When your defenseman is feeding your forwards.
that effectively, it completely breaks traditional
defensive strategies. You can't plan for it.
You really can't. Opposing teams had no idea
how to cover the blue line while also dealing
with Phil Esposito crashing the net. Which perfectly
explains why Boston's scoring leaders look the
way they did. The top four. I have the league's
top scoring chart right here. Number one, Phil
Esposito. Number two, Bobby Orr. Number three,
Johnny Butziket. Number four, Ken Hodge. It's
literally just a wall of Boston Bruins. Which
was a massive historical first. No single team
had ever claimed the top four scoring spots in
the NHL before. That is insane. Busick's put
up 116 points in the left wing. Hodge put up
105 from the right wing. Wow. And if you zoom
out even further, Boston claimed seven of the
top 11 scoring spots in the entire league. Seven
of the top 11. Yeah. They established the highest
scoring single season marks at every single position
on the ice. It was an offensive monopoly. So
while Boston is essentially playing a video game
on the lowest difficulty setting, the rest of
the league is still out there fighting for scraps.
Right. And generating some pretty wild historical
trivia. Oh, yeah. You have Gordie Howe, the absolute
legend, hitting his 1 ,000th career assist in
late October. Incredible milestone. And then
up in Buffalo, their shiny new number one draft
pick, Gilbert Perrault. Bursts onto the scene.
He scores 38 goals to break the rookie record
and just coasts to the Calder Trophy. A bright
spot for an expansion team. Definitely. But not
every team was having a milestone year. We have
to talk about the Detroit Red Wings. Oh boy.
Yeah, the Red Wings are the perfect counter -narrative
to Boston's perfection. A total disaster. They
did have one bright spot in introducing a fantastic
rookie goaltender named Jim Rutherford. But organizationally.
They were a mess. They finished dead last in
the East Division. Dead last. And their season
was completely overshadowed by one exceptionally
dark afternoon in January. A 13 -0, a catastrophic
defeat against the Toronto Maple Leafs. 13 -0.
It remains the worst defeat in the history of
the Detroit franchise. It's hard to even picture
a modern game ending 13 -0. It really is. But
you know what? The on -ice embarrassment is nothing
compared to the front office meltdown that followed.
This is my favorite part. It's so crazy. So the
team's general manager, Sid Abel, marches into
the office of the team owner, Bruce Norris, and
he demands that the head coach, Ned Harkness,
be fired immediately. Which makes sense after...
13 are lost. Right. But the owner flat out refuses.
Unbelievable. So the GM resigns in protest right
there on the spot. Just walks away. Yeah. And
what does the owner do next? He takes the coach
who just lost a game 13 -0 and promotes him to
general manager. It is an objectively baffling
sequence of executive decisions. I mean, you
are rewarding a historic level of failure with
a promotion. Exactly. But that level of volatility
wasn't just limited to individual team management.
What do you mean? The league itself was dealing
with a massive structural crisis regarding its
playoff format. Hockey fans know the 1967 expansion
completely skewed the power dynamics of the NHL.
But by 1970, it had become a critical business
problem. Because you had the East Division, which
housed all the established original six teams,
and the West Division, which was entirely populated
by the newer 1967 expansion franchises. Right.
And that separation created an incredibly predictable,
non -competitive postseason. Just blowouts. Total
blowouts. For three consecutive years leading
up to this season, the St. Louis Blues won the
West Division. They went to the Stanley Cup final
and were immediately swept in four games by whatever
original six powerhouse came out of the East.
It was boring television. It was boring television,
and the league knew it. So they tweaked the playoff
format. Okay. They decided the divisions would
cross over in the semifinals. The winner of the
first versus third place East matchup would now
play the winner of the second versus fourth place
West matchup. Got it. Combining that crossover
with moving the powerhouse Chicago Blackhawks
into the West Division was supposed to manufacture
a much more competitive Stanley Cup final. Here's
where it gets really interesting. Yeah. Because
playoff qualification was still determined entirely
by the divisional standings. The top four teams
in each division make the cut. Right. And this
new crossover format created a massive loophole
that led to a major controversy right at the
end of the regular season. The tanking rumors.
Yes. Let's look at the Minnesota North Stars.
With four games left on the schedule, they are
sitting in third place in the West with 72 points.
Right behind them in fourth place are the Philadelphia
Flyers with 67 points. Okay, so under the playoff
rules, the first place team in a division plays
the third place team, and the second place team
plays the fourth place team. Sitting in first
place in the West were the mighty Chicago Blackhawks,
armed with 107 points. Sitting in second place
were the St. Louis Blues with 87 points. So if
you're Minnesota and you hold on to third place,
your reward is getting thrown into the meat grounder
against the juggernaut Chicago Blackhawks in
the very first round. A guaranteed early exit.
Exactly. But... If you conveniently slip down
to fourth place, you get a significantly easier
matchup against St. Louis. Funny how that works.
Well, guess what happens? Minnesota somehow manages
to lose all four of their final regular season
games. What a coincidence. Right. The Flyers
scrape together a few points, edge ahead of Minnesota
by a single point in the standings, and Minnesota
officially drops to fourth. Now, wait a minute.
Did they actually throw those games on purpose
just to dodge Chicago? I mean, officially. It
was never proven. Yeah. And no one ever went
on the record to confess to a conspiracy. Naturally.
But if you look at the context and the sudden
drop in performance, it was an open secret around
the league that the North Stars intentionally
tanked. And if we look at the results, the strategy
worked brilliantly. Minnesota avoided Chicago,
played St. Louis in the quarterfinals, and beat
them four games to two. And what happened to
Philadelphia? Philadelphia had to face Chicago.
and the Flyers were promptly swept in four games.
That is rough. It was. The optics of a team potentially
throwing games to get a better matchup were so
damaging that the NHL was forced to change the
playoff structure again the very next year. Back
to the standard format. Yeah, back to the standard
1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3 format. So while teams in
the West are allegedly dodging matchups to survive,
let's look at what's happening in the East with
the Montreal Canadiens. Oh, man. Because if Boston
was a well -oiled machine, Montreal was a burning
car rolling down a hill. That is a perfect description.
This was a team that had completely missed the
playoffs the year before, which for a franchise
like Montreal is practically a crime. The internal
culture in Montreal was incredibly toxic that
year. Bad locker room. Terrible. The players
absolutely despised their head coach, Claude
Rule. He had a very dictatorial, my way or the
highway approach. Which doesn't usually fly with
veterans. Not at all. It might work on rookies,
but it deeply alienated a locker room full of
proud, established players. The tension was suffocating.
It got really bad, didn't it? It got to the point
where core players like Ralph Backstrom and John
Ferguson literally announced their retirements
just to get away from the environment Rule was
creating. That is wild. You have professional
athletes at the top of their game choosing to
walk away from their paychecks rather than play
for this guy. Just to escape. Unbelievable. So
eventually the pressure boils over, Rule steps
down, and Al McNeil takes over behind the bench.
Right. And Ferguson and Backstrom are convinced
to return to the ice. Though Backstrom is quickly
traded away to Los Angeles. True. But even with
McNeil trying to right the ship, Montreal limps
into the playoffs looking completely dysfunctional.
They finish third in the East with 97 points,
and waiting for them in the quarterfinals are
the E1 Boston Bruins. The juggernaut. The 121
-point, 399 -goal, historically dominant Bruins.
It was viewed as a complete mismatch. Boston
had crushed Montreal in the regular season, winning
five of their six matchups. So everyone thought
it would be a sweep. Every analyst, every fan
expected a bloodbath. And for a while, it was.
Boston comfortably takes game one. Then we get
to game two at the Boston Garden. The Bruins
are playing exactly like the Bruins. Heading
into the final stretch of the game, Boston is
up. 5 -1. The crowd is planning the parade. Exactly.
And then a switch flips. Montreal pulls off one
of the most stunning comebacks in the history
of the sport. Unbelievable game. They score six
unanswered goals, including five in the final
session, to shock the Bruins and win 7 -5. That
comeback completely shatters Boston's aura of
invincibility. It really does. And it sets the
stage for the true disruptor of the 1971 season.
Ken Dryden. The intern. The intern. Montreal
had called up this rookie goaltender right at
the end of the season. He only played six regular
season games. Six games. It's just six. But McNeil
decides to start him in the playoffs over the
veteran Roji Vachon. And Dryden was a revelation.
I have to ask, why was Dryden so effective against
a team that literally had the top four scorers
in the league? How does a rookie do that? A lot
of it came down to his physical presence and
his unorthodox style. Dryden was huge for a goalie
in that era. He stood 6 '4". Oh, wow. He took
up an enormous amount of the net. But more than
his size, it was his demeanor. What do you mean?
Well, while Boston was furiously crashing the
net, Dryden would famously just stand there,
resting his chin on his stick, looking completely
relaxed. Like he's just waiting for a bus. Exactly.
Furthermore, because he had spent most of the
year at the minors or at Cornell University before
that, Boston had zero scouting reports on him.
Oh, that's huge. They didn't know his weaknesses.
He was a complete ghost to them. You know, have
you ever spent months putting together a flawless
airtight plan for a project at work only to watch
it completely fall apart because of one? totally
unpredictable variable that you couldn't possibly
have accounted for. That is exactly what Ken
Dryden was to the Boston Bruins. Here is this
rookie staring down the greatest offensive lineup
the NHL had ever seen, and he completely stonewalls
them. And Boston threw everything they had at
him. In game four, Bobby Orr actually becomes
the first defenseman in NHL history to record
a hat trick in a playoff game, willing Boston
to a 5 -2 win. But Dryden just didn't crumble.
He simply refused to break under the pressure.
In Game 5, he faces 56 shots and stops 49 of
them. Insane volume. And then in Game 7, back
at the hostile Boston Garden, he stops 46 of
48 shots. Montreal wins the series four games
to three. The unstoppable Bruins are eliminated
in the very first round. It is the ultimate David
versus Goliath upset. Truly. And Montreal just
absorbs that momentum and keeps rolling. Let's
look at the semifinals. We have the E3 Montreal
Canadiens facing off against the W4 Minnesota
North Stars. The same team that allegedly tanked
just to get to this position. Right. And give
Minnesota credit, they didn't just roll over.
No, they fought hard. In game two of that series,
Minnesota's goaltender Cesar Maniago plays out
of his mind and leads the North Stars to a 6
-3 victory right in the legendary Montreal Forum.
Which was a massive historical milestone. It
marked the very first time an original six team
suffered a playoff defeat at the hands of a 1967
expansion franchise. A huge deal. Very huge.
But the Canadians regrouped, leaned on their
veteran core, and took the series four games
to two. Over in the other semifinal matchup,
we have the W1 Chicago Blackhawks taking on the
E -Tour New York Rangers. And this series is
just an absolute meat grinder. It goes seven
brutal games. We have to talk about game six
at Madison Square Garden. Game six was a test
of pure human endurance. The game went into triple
overtime. Triple OT. You have to understand the
physical toll that takes on a player. They're
skating on chopped up ice, muscles cramping,
completely exhausted, but playing with utter
desperation. Just running on fumes. That's exactly.
Finally, the Rangers dig deep and pull out a
3 -2 win to force a Game 7. But the exhaustion
caught up with them, and Chicago ultimately wins
Game 7 to advance to the Stanley Cup Final. Which
sets up an incredible clash for the championship.
The Montreal Canadiens versus the Chicago Blackhawks.
You have two original six teams battling for
the Cup. Completely fulfilling the NHL's dream
of a highly competitive final series after years
of lopsided sweeps. And they deliver a classic.
The series goes the full seven games. The momentum
swung wildly back and forth all series. But it
all comes down to game seven at the Chicago Stadium.
Let's set the scene. Over halfway into the second
period, the Blackhawks are leading 2 -2. Looking
good for Chicago. Listen, great. The hometown
crowd in Chicago is deafening. They can practically
taste the Stanley Cup. And then Montreal's Jacques
Lemaire takes a shot. Yeah. And it's not a brilliant
tactical play. It isn't a close -range breakaway
or a highly calculated power play setup. He literally
winds up and takes a miraculous speculative shot
from center ice. It was a shot that had no business
going in. None. But it takes a bizarre bounce.
and somehow escapes Chicago's elite goaltender,
Tony Esposito. Which completely breaks the psychological
seal on the game. It really does. It cuts the
Chicago lead to 2 -1, and you can physically
see the momentum shift on the ice. Just before
the second period ends, Montreal's veteran center,
Henri Richard, ties the game. And then, just
two and a half minutes into the third period,
Richard strikes again, scoring to give Montreal
the 3 -2 lead. From there, the rookie Ken Dryden
just shuts the door completely. He stops every
single frantic shot Chicago throws at him in
the third period. He was a wall. The clock winds
down and Montreal holds on to win 3 -2, capturing
their third Stanley Cup in four years. It's amazing.
And if we connect this to the bigger picture,
the historical significance of this specific
Game 7 is massive. How so? First off, the Canadians
became the last road team to win a Game 7 of
a Stanley Cup final for almost four decades.
Wait, really? Yeah, a road team wouldn't do it
again until the Pittsburgh Penguins managed it
in 2009. That's an incredible gap. It is. And
second, it served as the final triumphant game
of a legendary career for Canadian superstar
and captain Jean Beliveau. He retired right after
lifting the cup. What a way to go out. You know,
the distribution of the individual awards that
year really highlights the absolute irony of
the season. Oh, definitely. You have Phil Esposito
of the Bruins winning the first ever Lester B.
Pearson Award, which is voted on by the players
for the most outstanding regular season player,
along with the Art Ross Trophy for leading the
league in points. But when the dust settled on
the playoffs... It was the rookie, Ken Dryden,
who hoisted the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff
MVP. A total upset from start to finish. And
you'd think that winning a championship would
finally cure the dysfunction in Montreal. You
would think. But the drama wasn't quite over.
You remember Al McNeil. the coach who took over
mid -season to navigate that toxic locker room.
Oh, this is the ultimate final twist. It is.
So during the Stanley Cup final, specifically
in Game 5, McNeil makes the controversial decision
to bench Henri Richard. The exact same Henri
Richard who would go on to score the tying and
cup -winning goals in Game 7. Right. Well, Richard
is absolutely furious about being benched. After
winning the Stanley Cup, during what should be
the pinnacle of celebration, Richard gets in
front of the press. Oh, no. And publicly declares
that Al McNeil is, quote, the worst coach I ever
played for. Wow. He later tried to walk it back,
claiming it was just an emotional comment made
in anger. But the damage was completely irreversible.
He was done. Think about what McNeil accomplished.
He stepped in midseason. He navigated a notoriously
hostile locker room. He orchestrated the greatest
upset in hockey history against the Bruins. And
won the Stanley Cup. And despite all of that.
The locker room politics force Al McNeil to resign
as head coach shortly after the parade. Which
is just devastating. So what does this all mean?
Let's recap this incredibly chaotic journey.
We watched the Boston Bruins build an unbeatable,
mathematically terrifying machine that dominated
every statistic. We saw the NHL completely change
its playoff rules to manufacture fairness and
combat non -competitive finals. We explored the
very real possibility of a team intentionally
throwing games just to survive the first round.
And we followed a highly dysfunctional Montreal
squad that rode a giant unknown rookie goalie
to a championship, only to publicly humiliate
and force out their coach immediately afterward.
It perfectly illustrates the gap between theory
and reality what do you mean by that well on
paper boston had already won this season they
had the stats the records and the deepest roster
in the history of the sport but sports much like
life are not played on a spreadsheet. They really
aren't. They are played by emotional, unpredictable
human beings. The human elements, like internal
team hatred, a rookie getting incredibly hot
at the exact right moment, or a miraculous lucky
bounce from center ice, those are the things
that actually dictate reality. And that brings
up a really fascinating thought to leave you
with today. If Montreal's starting goaltender
hadn't faltered, or if the coach had just decided
to stick with the veteran instead and Ken Dryden
had never been called up, Boston wins. The 1970
-71 Boston Bruins would likely be remembered
today as the undisputed, absolute greatest hockey
team to ever touch the ice. They'd be untouchable.
They would be the gold standard by which all
other teams are measured. It makes you wonder
how often do we judge the absolute best in any
field, whether it's sports, business or history,
completely unaware that a single random stroke
of luck or one unpredictable variable is the
only reason the history books look the way they
do. This raises an important question about how
we define greatness. Is it the steady accumulation
of statistical perfection or is it the gritty
ability to survive the chaotic, unpredictable
variables that inevitably arise? had the former.
But Montreal, despite all their glaring flaws
and internal toxicity, mastered the latter. It's
an incredible thing to think about. Thank you
so much for joining us on this deep dive into
the source material. We hope you enjoyed unraveling
the stats, the drama, and the history of the
1970 -71 NHL season as much as we did. It was
a wild ride. We'll be back next time with another
stack of sources to unpack. Until then, keep
questioning the history books.