The 10 most unbreakable NHL playoff records

Matt Larkin
Matt Larkin(MLarkinHockey)
The 10 most unbreakable NHL playoff records

Two years ago, Columbus Blue Jackets goaltender Joonas Korpisalo delivered an all-time performance during the Stanley Cup playoffs. In an agonizing five-overtime defeat to the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 1 of their Round-1 matchup, he stopped 85 shots. That broke Kelly Hrudey’s single-game postseason record of 73, set in 1987.

Earlier this week, New York Rangers goaltender Igor Shesterkin gave Korpisalo a good run, making 79 saves in a triple-overtime loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins, good for the second most ever in a playoff game.

So while Korpisalo’s record is incredible, it doesn’t look unbreakable. Someone almost eclipsed it just two years later.

Some NHL playoff records do seem unbreakable, however. What are they?

Here are my picks for the 10 most unbreakable NHL postseason records.

Disclaimer: I won’t count the Tampa Bay Lightning and Andre Vasilevskiy’s record 18 wins in the 2020 postseason. Unless the NHL deploys a bubble with a round-robin and play-in round again someday, 18 wins is a 100-percent unbreakable record, since the traditional path to a Stanley Cup maxes out at 16 victories. For this list, we’ll look at records that at least theoretically could be broken.

The honorable mention

In 1992-93, the Montreal Canadiens went to overtime a record 11 times in a single playoff run. They won 10 of those games, including 10 straight, during their Stanley Cup-winning spring. So why does it miss the cut? Going to overtime is not reflective of an era. Theoretically, it could still happen 11 times to any team in any year. I don’t consider the streak unbreakable, as anomalous as it was at the time.

10. Rick Middleton: 19 points in one playoff series, 1982-83

We kick it off with a record that’ll be tough to eclipse because playoff games just have far less offense than they did in the 1980s. Goaltending in particular has improved to the point that it’ll be tough for a player to do what ‘Nifty’ Middleton did in 1983. His 19 points in seven games against the Buffalo Sabres in the Adams Division final included 10 in a two-game stretch. The record sits “only” 10th on the list because there is one current player talented enough to produce like this for a seven-game stretch: Connor McDavid. You never know, right?

9. Bryan Trottier: 27 straight playoff games with a point, 1979-80 to 1981-82

So much changes annually in today’s NHL. The Montreal Canadiens just went from the Stanley Cup final to last overall from one season to the next. To go 27 games in a row with a point in the playoffs, a player needs real continuity – of team quality and linemates. It makes sense that the longest point streak in playoff history belongs to the first-line center on a line full of Hall of Famers in the middle of a dynasty. Trottier’s streak will be tough to match.

8. Jarri Kurri: 12 goals in one playoff series, 1984-85

It’s one thing to rack up 19 points in a series like Middleton did. It’s another to personally score 12 times in a series. And Kurri did it in six games! His barrage on Chicago Black Hawks (since rebranded the Blackhawks) included three hat tricks in the final five games of the series. As you can imagine, Wayne Gretzky assisted on nine of Kurri’s 12 goals in that series, which propelled the Edmonton Oilers into the Stanley Cup final.

7. Montreal Canadiens: five consecutive Stanley Cups, 1955-56 to 1959-60

See a pattern in the middle section of this list? Here’s another record that’ll never be equalled because the league landscape is so different. The Habs of the mid-1950s won five consecutive Cups (a) in a six-team league; (b) by winning 10 total playoff series; and (c) got help from monopolizing the best French-Canadian talent in the NHL. In today’s salary-cap world, two straight Stanley Cups are a monumental achievement. Heck – no team has even won three or more titles in a row since the early-1980s New York Islanders.

6. Patrick Roy: 151 career playoff wins

The goaltender position has changed dramatically in the past five to 10 years alone. It requires far more east-west movement during the course of a game and it taxes goalies’ bodies. That’s why 70-game seasons, which used to be commonplace for the likes of Martin Brodeur, have become unicorns. For a goalie to win 151 playoff games, that’s an average of 10 per year across a 15-year stretch, or an average of reaching the conference final every year in a 15-season stretch. The odds of a goaltender being on teams that play that many postseason games across his career are already slim given my earlier points about the cap and parity. But to also have the physical longevity to be a No. 1 netminder for that long? Almost impossible. Roy’s 151 wins are 38 more than second-place Brodeur’s 113. Marc-Andre Fleury, the top active player, has 92. He could win the Stanley Cup three years in a row and not catch Roy.

If there’s any netminder with a chance to threaten the mark one day? It’s Andrei Vasilevskiy. With Tuukka Rask retiring this year, ‘Vasy’ is already No. 2 in playoff wins among active goaltenders, and he’s just 27.

5. Chris Chelios: 24 seasons in the Stanley Cup playoffs

Having a 24-year NHL career is unbelievably improbable. Only eight players have logged that many seasons, ever. But to make the playoffs 24 times is positively absurd. Chelios did it in 24 of 26 seasons. No other player has done it more than 21 times.

And if we drill deeper: no active player as done it more than 18 times. Parity and cap constraints make it far more difficult to play on a playoff-caliber team every single season. Chelios also spent much of his career in a time when 16 of 21 teams, or 76 percent, reached the big dance. Now, it’s 16 of 32, or 50 percent. A 24-time postseason player? Never happening again unless the league contracts and/or eliminates the cap.

4. New York Islanders: 19 consecutive playoff series wins, 1979-80 to 1983-84

The aforementioned Habs dynasty has the consecutive Cups record, yes. But The Isles’ dynasty, which yielded four Cups in a row, featured almost double the playoff series wins. By the time the Isles rose to power, the NHL had adopted the four-round format of the postseason. The four Cup runs gave them 16 series wins and, since they won three more to reach the 1984 Stanley Cup final before losing to Edmonton, the Isles finished with an astonishing 19 straight series victories.

3. Henri Richard: 11 Stanley Cup wins as a player

Only three franchises, let alone players, have 11 or more Stanley Cups. ‘The Pocket Rocket,’ hockey’s winningest player ever, had more rings than he had fingers and thumbs on which to wear them. He’s a worthy Hall of Famer, but the sheer number of his Cups came from playing in a six-team league on a Habs team that dominated regularly. On the all-time leaderboard of Cup wins as players, the top five and 12 of the top 13 won all their championships with Montreal. The league configuration is simply too different today for anyone to replicate this accomplishment.

2. Wayne Gretzky: 382 career playoff points

Gretzky is the most dominant athlete in the history of major team sports, his numbers so cartoonish that he’d still be hockey’s all-time leading scorer even if he never scored a goal. He lorded above his competition just as significantly in the playoffs as he did in the regular season. His 382 points put him 87 ahead of second-place Mark Messier but 149 ahead of third place. Gretzky’s total almost doubles that of active leader Sidney Crosby (195), who sits seventh all-time. Not only will there never be another Gretzky, but offense may never match its 1980s heights again, so No. 99’s record is extremely safe. Consider this spot a stand-in for his playoff goals and assists records, too, as they are also well out of reach.

1. Dale Hunter: 731 playoff penalty minutes

Hunter’s playoff PIM totals look like they come from an alternate-universe hockey gladiator pit on a distant planet. He once had 99 PIM in a single playoff year. He had 98 another playoff year. He’s 190 PIM ahead of any other player, including all his contemporaries who played when the sport was far more violent. The nearest active player is Corey Perry at 254, so Hunter has almost tripled that total.

Not only does playoff hockey have far less fighting and dirty play than it used to – but the types of players who rack up PIM simply don’t play as much anymore. Consider the No. 2 all-time PIM guy in playoff history, Chris Nilan. Players of his ilk are lucky to play five minutes in a postseason game nowadays if they make the team at all.

Which is all a long way to say: it’s impossible for a player to accumulate 731 PIM for his career during the playoffs in the modern NHL. The game is too different now.

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