Game 5 and what it means historically for the Stanley Cup
Historical stats tend to get more play than usual during the postseason portion of the hockey season — of any pro sports’ playoff run, really. So naturally the Stanley Cup Final series piques the interest of those wanting to feast on team records, indulge in statistics from hockey seasons past and open the vault to stories aplenty.
Here are some fun Stanley Cup Final factoids as the hours wind down to Game 5 at Consol Energy Center between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the San Jose Sharks.
Per hockey-reference.com … The record for a home team in a Game 5 scenario of the Stanley Cup Final is 369-201 in regulation, 60-53 in overtime. The home team is 139-66 in a “closeout game” — the game that ends the series.
According to the same source, 22.7 percent of road teams who enter Game 5 with a 3-1 series deficit have won and forced a Game 6.
The Pens are looking to end the series on Thursday. Three teams… since the turn if the millennium have won a Stanley Cup Final series with a fourth victory in Game 5: the Detroit Red Wings in 2002, Anaheim Ducks in 2007 and most recently the Los Angeles Kings in 2014. The Kings' win came on a goal by defenseman Alec Martinez in double-overtime.
That being said, although the Sharks are in a 3-1 hole… they wouldn’t be the first team in history mount a miraculous comeback and take over the Final.
Dave Stubbs of NHL.com chronicled the tale of the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs, who rallied from a 3-1 hole in the fifth game of the series.
It is not an inescapable crater in which the San Jose Sharks find themselves heading into Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final.
That it has been unsuccessfully escaped 96.9 percent of the time since 1939 simply means, if you're a glass-half-full Sharks fan, there's a 3.1 percent chance of your team making a comeback for the ages…
A team has held a 3-1 series lead 32 times since the Stanley Cup Final became a best-of-seven affair in 1939. Thirty-one times, that team has won the NHL championship.
The Toronto Maple Leafs fashioned a magical rally in 1942, not only coming back from a 3-1 deficit against the Detroit Red Wings, but a 3-0 hole to win their second Stanley Cup.
That comeback was also reportedly jump-started by some violent behavior:
The whole story line of “playing with the lead”… has gotten plenty of play over the latter part of the Final particularly because, should Pittsburgh jump out to another 1-0 lead in Game 5, it will continue San Jose's streak of not leading at all this Stanley Cup Final.
Cross-referencing box scores from past Final series helped reveal that no team has trailed in every game since 1960. That other team? The Maple Leafs. Unlike the Sharks — who tallied a Game 3 victory thanks to Joonas Donskoi’s game-winning goal in overtime — the 1960 Leafs were swept by the Montreal Canadiens in four games.
Interested in the historical mishaps of Lord Stanley’s Cup? … No, it isn’t carved in stone that the Penguins will win Game 5 on Thursday and hoist the Cup. But with the end of the Final inching closer, all the fun stories about hockey’s big prize begin to surface. Some of them even give a gander into why the Cup is so heavily guarded and taken care of.
Season-long go-to for all good hockey history gems is @NHLhistorygirl. On the eve of Game 5, she shared some fun facts — and some incidents that, had they happened today, probably would’ve earned them the social media tag #CupFail.
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