1995 Stanley Cup Finals

1995 Stanley Cup Finals

The 1995 Stanley Cup Final NHL championship series was contested by the New Jersey Devils and the Detroit Red Wings. This was the first of nine consecutive finals with American based franchises exclusively. New Jersey was making the franchise's first-ever appearance in the Final, while Detroit returned to the Final for the first time since 1966. The Devils swept the series four games to none to win their first Stanley Cup, becoming the sixth post-1967 expansion team to earn a championship.

Despite the fact that the regular season was cut severely short by the owners lockout, both the season, and the finals were saved at the eleventh hour and the playoffs were held, despite many fans and sports writers insistence that such a short season did not adequately reflect a proper hockey season and should have been aborted. The win by the Devils marked their first Stanley Cup title, after 21 seasons and two franchise relocations. It was also the first of three for the Devils in less than a decade. The win was made more impressive by the fact that the Devils won it holding the lowest seed ever to win the Stanley Cup with the 5th seed, which remained the record until 2012, another Final which not only involved the Devils, but also saw the Stanley Cup won by a team that did not have home ice advantage in any of the four rounds of the playoffs, as the Devils lost to the Los Angeles Kings. Their regular season winning percentage was also the lowest since the 1967 Toronto Maple Leafs. They were the underdogs going in, winning their first two games on the road.

This series featured the two teams that went to the finals at least four times since the NHL renamed the conferences before the 1993–94 season. Including 1995, the Devils went to the Final five times, while the Red Wings went to the Final six times. It also marked the beginning of a series of wins; the Devils and Red Wings, along with the Colorado Avalanche, would establish in the era from 1995 to 2003. The three teams would win a combined eight of nine Stanley Cups during that time. The Devils won it here, followed by the Avalanche in 1996, then the Red Wings in 1997 and 1998. After the Dallas Stars won in 1999, the four-year cycle repeated as the Devils started it again in 2000, followed by Colorado in 2001, Detroit in 2002, and the Devils themselves again in 2003.