1994: The Drought Ends

What a difference a day made.

With his New York Rangers worn down after losing Games 5 and 6 of the 1994 Finals to Vancouver, Neil Smith was glad that the schedule called for an extra day of rest before Game 7 at Madison Square Garden. As eager as he was to see the team he had built end hockey's longest championship drought, Smith was content to wait an extra day.

"Having two days of rest saved us," says Smith, then the Rangers' general manager and now an network analyst. "We were an older team and a lot of our guys had injuries. The extra day off really helped."

So did having the deciding game at Madison Square Garden, where a roaring sellout crowd was eager for its first taste of victory since 1940. "Playing before that home crowd was huge," Smith says. "We didn't want to be known as a team that blew a 3-1 lead in the Finals."

Not that Smith wasn't nervous after seeing his team win three of the first four games, then miss a chance to win the Cup at home in Game 5 and get beaten badly in Game 6 at Vancouver. "I don't think I slept at all the night before," he says.

But the Rangers, who hosted Game 7 after finishing with the NHL's best regular-season record for the second time in three seasons, were anything but nervous. Riding on the roar of the crowd, they dominated the first period and got goals from Brian Leetch and Adam Graves to leave the ice with a 2-0 lead. Trevor Linden's shorthanded goal early in the second cut the margin to 2-1, but Mark Messier jammed in a rebound late in the period to restore the two-goal edge with 20 minutes to play.

However, breaking a 54-year Cup drought isn't easy, and the Canucks made everyone nervous when Linden scored again with 15:10 to play. Now it was a one-goal game -- and for Smith, the seconds turned into minutes. Linden's second goal "numbed the building," he says. "Just when we thought we had it -- we found out that it's never over until it's over."

The Canucks spent most of the last 10 minutes in the Rangers' zone, but Mike Richter stopped everything in sight -- at one point getting some help from the goal post when Geoff Courtnall's potential game-tying shot caught the iron.

Even the fates appeared to torture the Rangers. With the final seconds winding down, Steve Larmer finally dumped the puck out of the zone, but the play was whistled back on an icing call with 1.8 seconds remaining.

But by then, even Smith was starting to relax.

"As paranoid as I can get," he says, "I knew that they weren't going to score with that little time on the clock." Craig MacTavish won the last draw and the longest championship drought in NHL history was over.

"Carrying the Cup was surreal," says Smith, who came to New York in 1989 and built the Rangers into a championship team in five years. "It was higher than any high. When I came to New York in 1989, there was such doubt that anyone could ever build a Cup winner in New York."

To Smith, who had never been an NHL general manager before taking the Rangers' job, building a championship team in New York was especially sweet.

"To have done it in New York, a place I never thought would win before I got there, was extremely satisfying -- one of the most rewarding feelings of my life," Smith says "To have done it for the fans -- there were people there actually crying. It was like the birth of a child. To have built that team and see the joy when we won the Cup was unbelievable."

2001: Not Everyone Loves Raymond

Ray Bourque had to get his Cup the hard way in 2001 when the Devils pushed the Avs to the limit.

The 2001 playoffs often looked like the NHL's version of "Everybody Loves Raymond," with Ray Bourque in the starring role. Bourque's quest for his first Stanley Cup ring was the story of the 2001 playoffs for most of the hockey world.

Don't count Ken Daneyko in that group.

The veteran defenseman and his New Jersey Devils teammates had no interest in seeing Bourque cap his Hall of Fame career by winning the Cup that had eluded him for more than two decades. As the defending champions, they were more interested in making their own kind of history.

"We'd already won two Cups (the first in 1995), and a win would have put us in the class of a dynasty," says Daneyko, whose tenure with the Devils dated to 1983-84, their second season in New Jersey. "Ray Bourque winning the Cup wasn't my story line. I wanted us to win and become a dynasty."

For the first time since 1988-89, the 2001 finals matched up the conference champions; the Devils won the East and the Colorado Avalanche was No. 1 in the West. According to Daneyko, there were no secrets between the two teams.

"We knew how good they were," he says of the Avalanche, which earned the chance to host Game 7 by winning the Presidents' Trophy. "They finished with 116 points. They were the best. We knew what to expect. I don't think there was any extra pressure on us because we were the defending champs. We were both expected to be there."

The Devils had a chance to avoid a seventh game when they captured Game 5 in Denver. They went back to New Jersey with the opportunity to finish off the series, but Patrick Roy was superb in a 4-0 shutout that sent the series back to Colorado for a deciding game.

"We didn't put in a good effort in Game 6," Daneyko says. "That was the disappointing part. We should have wrapped it up and not left things to chance in Game 7. They had momentum going back to their building after winning Game 6."

The Avalanche rode that momentum and the home-ice edge to a 3-0 lead and coasted to a 3-1 victory, giving Bourque the one thing he had never won in a career that's sure to earn him a place in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

The loss still grates on Daneyko.

"It seemed that we didn't want it as badly as they did," he says. "We don't feel like we accomplished something just by getting to the finals again -- we weren't a Cinderella team that was just happy to be there. To lose the Stanley Cup Final like that was devastating. Anything less than a championship is a disappointment."

And though Daneyko respects what Bourque accomplished, it was hard to him skating around the Pepsi Center with the Cup Daneyko and his teammates felt should have been theirs.

"He had a great career -- he's a future Hall of Famer and maybe the best defenseman that ever played," Daneyko says of Bourque. "If I wasn't in [the Final], I'd have been happy for him. But it's tough to be happy for him when you're on the other side."

2003: Out of nowhere

Every team that goes deep into the playoffs carries a few extra players, guys who might have spent most of the season in the minors but are on hand in case someone gets hurt or the coach feels the team needs a spark. Mike Rupp was one of those players for the 2003 New Jersey Devils, a big young forward who spent most of the season in the AHL.

"I played in Albany for 2 1/2 years, and they gave me a call in January," said Rupp, picked in the third round by the Devils in the 2000 Entry Draft. "I played in 26 [NHL] games and felt good. I kind of thought that was it until next season. I never thought I would get into the Stanley Cup Finals."

Mike Rupp came from out of nowhere to help the Devils win the Cup in seven games last year over the Mighty Ducks.

But with center Joe Nieuwendyk unable to play in the finals against the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim due to injury, Rupp finally got a chance in Game 4.

"We always kept an eye on him. We know the guy has talent," coach Pat Burns said. "We just have to force him to be able to use all his attributes every night."

Rupp said he was just happy to get the chance to play.

"I thought I might get into one game," he said. "I wanted to contribute any way I possibly could, maybe by winning a big draw. It didn't have to be on the score sheet."

Rupp had just one assist in his first three appearances as the Mighty Ducks battled back from losing the first two games to force Game 7 in a series that saw the home team win each of the first six games. Burns opted to dress Rupp again in the deciding game and play him on a line with Jeff Friesen and Jamie Langenbrunner.

The 6-foot-5 Rupp had a feeling something good was going to happen.

"I felt really good when I woke up," he said. "I was probably the most calm I've been in an NHL game this year. The leaders, the veterans on this team, kept us very calm, they keep you laughing all the way to game time."

But there was little laughter at the Continental Airlines Arena once the puck dropped; the game remained scoreless through the first period as Jean-Sebastien Giguere, whose goaltending had sparked the Ducks to the brink of their first championship, matched saves with Martin Brodeur. Just 2:22 into the second, though, Rupp made Burns look like a genius by beating Giguere to open the scoring, Ten minutes later, Rupp fed Friesen, who scored to give the Devils a 2-0 lead. And with 3:44 remaining in the third period, Rupp assisted on another goal by Friesen as the Devils rolled to a 3-0 victory and their third Stanley Cup in nine years.

The victory gave Brodeur his third shutout in the finals, sent 20-year veteran defenseman Ken Daneyko into retirement with a third Stanley Cup ring, and made Rupp one of the unlikeliest players ever to score the Cup-winning goal.

"Two weeks ago, I would never have thought this could happen," he said after earning the game's first star and adding his name to a list that includes some of hockey's immortals. "Coach Burns put me into this situation and showed he believed in me, and I've been blessed."

For his part, Burns said Rupp simply made the most of his opportunity.

"I kept telling him, 'You know what you have right now. You know the opportunity you have.' I kept on reminding him and he definitely took it."