The Series
This series brought together two assistant coaches who were teammates on the other Canucks team to reach the Finals, Rangers assistant coach Colin Campbell and Canucks assistant coach Stan Smyl, who served as team captain then, as Kevin McCarthy was injured.
It was the second straight Finals that featured a former Edmonton Oilers captain trying to become the first person to capture a Stanley Cup as captain on two different teams. The previous year, Wayne Gretzky, who captained the Oilers to the first four of their five Stanley Cups in the 1980s, captained the Los Angeles Kings to the finals. Here, it was Mark Messier of the Rangers, who captained the Oilers to the last of their five, in 1990.
The Rangers players had a decided edge in Finals experience, with seven players from the 1990 Oilers, including Messier, Glenn Anderson, Jeff Beukeboom, Adam Graves, Kevin Lowe, Craig MacTavish, and Esa Tikkanen. One 1990 Oiler, Martin Gélinas, played for the Canucks. Overall, the Rangers had eleven players with previous Finals appearances, compared to the Canucks' five. In addition, three of the Rangers (Messier, Anderson, and Lowe) were each making their seventh appearance in the Stanley Cup Finals (each having made their first six with Edmonton).
With the Rangers having 112 points and the Canucks having only 85, the 27 point difference was the largest point differential between two teams in the Stanley Cup Finals since 1982, when there was a 41 point difference between the New York Islanders (118) and the Canucks (77).
Read more about this topic: 1994 Stanley Cup Finals
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