Boston had “The Big Bad Bruins”. Philadelphia boasted “The Broad Street Bullies”. Montreal produced the latest dynasty in its storied history. Together in the 1970s, they played Keep Away with the Stanley Cup, shutting out the competition, including some strong New York Rangers teams.
The memory of those Bruins, Flyers and Canadiens championship clubs might make it easy to forget that the New York Rangers had some potent clubs that came very close to winning it all. In the first two parts of our series on great Rangers squads that almost won hockey’s Holy Grail we looked at the powerhouse teams of the early 1970s.
Part three of our series focused on the 1950 Rangers, who had a losing season, but shocked the hockey world in the playoffs, upsetting Montreal and taking the powerhouse Detroit Red Wings to a seventh game in the Finals.
Which brings us to part four of our series and the 1978-79 Rangers, who like their 1950 brethren, made an unexpected run to the Finals.
The surprise wasn’t because the Blueshirts lacked talent. They didn’t. In fact, with a 40-29-11 record and 91 points, they were the fifth Rangers team of the decade to win at least 40 games. This group wasn’t superior to their contemporaries of the early-1970s, but they didn’t win by accident, either.
The problem for the Rangers that season was bad timing. To win the Cup, they had the misfortune of having to go through one team on the verge of becoming a dynasty, and another approaching the end of one.
The NHL at the time had 17 teams split into four divisions, two apiece for the Campbell and Wales conferences. The Rangers were in the Patrick Division of the Campbell Conference with the Flyers, New York Islanders and Atlanta Flames.
The Patrick Division was by far the strongest in the NHL in 1978-79.
How strong? Well, as good as the Rangers were, they still finished behind the New York Islanders (51-15-14, 116 points) and the Flyers (40-25-15, 95 points). Even last-place Atlanta (41-31-8, 90 points) made the playoffs.
Thus, the Rangers sweep of the mediocre Los Angeles Kings in the best-of-three preliminary round barely raised any eyebrows.
In the quarterfinals against the Flyers, the Rangers dropped the opener, but then turned heads by winning four straight to eliminate their hated rivals.
The Blueshirts’ encore in the semifinals would open even more eyes.