List Of NHL Franchise Post-season Droughts
These are lists of active and all-time National Hockey League (NHL) franchise post-season appearance, post-season series win, Stanley Cup Final and Stanley Cup droughts up to and including the 2012 Stanley Cup playoffs. Those teams which have never made it in franchise history are listed by the season that they entered the league, either as a new franchise or when they merged into the NHL from the defunct WHA league.
Note: These lists do not include the canceled 2004–05 NHL season.
Among the current 30 NHL teams, 12 have never won the Stanley Cup, including one (the St. Louis Blues) that is among the five oldest expansion teams. Additionally, one of the Original Six franchises – the Toronto Maple Leafs – has a Stanley Cup drought that pre-dates the expansion era (44 seasons and counting). Of the six franchises that have never been to the Stanley Cup Final, the oldest is the Phoenix Coyotes (previously the Winnipeg Jets) (32 seasons), while the Maple Leafs and the Blues have even longer droughts (44 and 41 seasons, respectively). The longest Stanley Cup championship drought in history was that of the New York Rangers, broken in 1994 after 53 seasons. The second-longest was that of the Chicago Blackhawks, broken in 2010 after 47 seasons. Of the twelve longest such droughts, seven are active as of the end of the 2011-2012 season, with another ending in each of the three previous seasons.
There are only two franchises that have never won a post-season playoff series (the Atlanta Thrashers/Winnipeg Jets and the Columbus Blue Jackets), though the oldest is just 12 seasons old; two other franchises (New York Islanders and Florida Panthers) have longer win droughts (18 and 15 seasons respectively). The Panthers had not appeared in the playoffs at all for 10 seasons, the longest such streak in NHL history which ended in 2012.
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