Read the opposing arguments from Sports Geek and Loyal Homer.
Long shot upsets in the playoffs are always exciting when they happen. The toppling of a heavily favored giant sends shockwaves through the entire sport, and excites fans of the proverbial underdog everywhere.
In sports like basketball, the eight over one upset is a very rare occurrence, happening only three times since the league expanded to a 16-team playoff 26 years ago. Each of those upsets was remarkable, augmented by the rarity in which they occurred.
For the NHL, the eight over one upset is not so rare. In fact, when the eight-seeded Montreal Canadiens defeated the Eastern Conference’s top seeded Washington Capitals last weekend they became the ninth team in just 16 years to do so. While that does not diminish the impressive nature of the accomplishment, the seeming regularity with which it occurs tends to take away some of the specialness. And with each new occurrence, the exclusiveness of this club is lost a little more.
Still, there is one team which entered the quest for Lord Stanley’s Cup as an eight seed that holds a claim those other victorious eight seeds cannot – the 2005-2006 Edmonton Oilers.
First, to set the context for just how great this upset was, it is important to consider how the Oilers even reached the playoffs.
To begin with, the Oilers did not claim the eighth and final playoff spot by virtue of their having won more games than the remaining teams in the Western Conference. Instead, it was by virtue of the fact that they at least pushed overtime before losing more of their games. The Vancouver Canucks, residing in the same Northwest Division as Edmonton, actually won more games. But because they had more losses in regulation, they did not receive the necessary points in the standings to finish the season ahead of the Oilers. As a result, they missed out on the playoffs, and it was Edmonton who drew the daunting task of facing-off against a Detroit Red Wings team that was not just the top team in the West, but in the entire NHL.
The Detroit Red Wings had entered the playoffs with a league-leading 58 wins. Offensively, the Red Wings featured players like future Hall of Famer Steve Yzerman, as well as players like Brendan Shanahan (40 goals that season), Henrik Zetterberg (39 goals), Nicklas Lidstrom (64 assists) and Pavel Datsyuk (59 assists). Defensively, they featured one of the league’s top goaltending tandems in Manny Legace, whose 2.19 goals against average was the third best in the entire NHL, and “The Wizard of Os,” Chris Osgood, who had returned to Detroit after becoming a Hockeytown legend in the net for the Red Wings during their reign at the top for much of the 1990s.
This Red Wings team appeared to be on track to win yet another title for Hockeytown, USA, and by all accounts, the Oilers should have posed no challenge. The Red Wings had not lost to the Oilers in regulation all season long, and split the season series with Edmonton at two games apiece. By comparison to the Red Wings offensive leaders, the Oilers featured only one 30-goal scorer in Ryan Smyth (36). In the net, goalie Jussi Markkanen carried with him a goals against average of 3.12 during most of the season before finally being benched in favor of Dwayne Roloson, whom Edmonton had acquired from the Minnesota Wild in a late season trade.
But despite the clear Red Wings advantage on paper, when the puck dropped it was Edmonton who skated their way to victory, taking the series in SIX games (not seven).
So what accomplishment did the 2006 Edmonton Oilers achieve which sets them apart as having completed the greatest eight over one upset in NHL history? It was simple – they didn’t stop after the first round.
Each of the other eight seeds that were fortunate enough to escape the first round of the NHL playoffs subsequently lost their second-round matchup (with the exception of the 2010 Montreal Canadiens, who currently stand tied with the reigning champion Pittsburgh Penguins at 1-1 in the second round). The 2006 Edmonton Oilers are the only team in NHL history to have won multiple playoff series as an eight seed in the tournament after defeating the top team in their conference. That means they are also the only eight seed to upset a fifth seeded team (the San Jose Sharks), and a sixth seeded team (the Anaheim Mighty Ducks). They are the only eight seed to reach the Stanley Cup Finals, and nearly became the only eight seed to WIN the Stanley Cup, as they took the championship series all the way into seven games before falling to the Carolina Hurricanes.
After pulling off an upset just to reach the playoffs, the 2005-2006 Edmonton Oilers defeated the very best that the league had to offer in Detroit, and then followed that victory up with proof that it was no fluke. They extended their season all the way into game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals, and until an eight seed can make a run that ends with a Stanley Cup victory, it will remain as the greatest eight over one upset ever!
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