Avalanche comeback in Western Final improbable, but not impossible

A team whose name speaks of mountains faces a long, steep climb in its bid to earn a berth in the Stanley Cup Final.

Few observers imagined, much less predicted, that the Colorado Avalanche, Presidents’ Trophy winner as the best team in the NHL’s regular season, would be down 3-0 in the best-of-7 Western Conference Final against the Vegas Golden Knights and on the brink of being swept from the postseason. But the beauty/nightmare of playoff hockey is that unpredictability is the only thing that’s guaranteed.

With their stunning comeback in Game 3 on Sunday, scoring five straight times in a 5-3 home-ice win, the Golden Knights can advance to the Cup Final with a victory in Game 4 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Tuesday (9 p.m. ET; ESPN, SN, TVAS, CBC).

Twenty-six points better than the Golden Knights through an 82-game schedule, statistics are meaningless to the Avalanche. One more loss in their next four games will send them into the offseason for an unpleasant autopsy. Teams that fall behind 3-0 in a best-of-7 series in the round before the Cup Final are 0-49 all-time.

Choose your cliche: backs against the wall; there’s no tomorrow; on the ropes ...

Ross Colton of the Colorado Avalanche is outnumbered while skating against Vegas Golden Knights’ Kaedan Korczak, Colton Sissons, Dylan Coghlan and Mark Stone during Game 3 of the Western Conference Final on Sunday in Las Vegas.

If it seems improbable, a rally by the Avalanche wouldn’t be without precedent. Four times since the best-of-7 format was introduced in 1938-39 for at least part of the postseason, a team has crawled out of a 3-0 deficit to win a seventh and deciding game.

Most recently, the 2013-14 Los Angeles Kings were down 3-0 to the San Jose Sharks in a first-round series before reeling off four straight wins, the first huge step on their road to their second Stanley Cup championship in three seasons.

The 2009-10 Philadelphia Flyers won four in a row to eliminate the Boston Bruins in a seven-game Eastern Conference semifinal.

That sensational comeback came 35 years after the 1974-75 New York Islanders rallied against the Pittsburgh Penguins in their quarterfinal series.

A Windsor Star report of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ historic comeback in Game 7 of the 1942 Stanley Cup Final against the Detroit Red Wings.

Most famous of the four was the 1941-42 Toronto Maple Leafs’ rally against the Detroit Red Wings, the only time an “impossible” four-win comeback has happened in a Cup Final.

On six other occasions, between 1938-39 and 2023-24, a team has come one win short, winning three when down 3-0 before falling in Game 7. Twice that’s happened in the Cup Final: the 2023-24 Edmonton Oilers and 1944-45 Red Wings almost cleared the last hurdle before respectively falling to the Florida Panthers and Maple Leafs.

In 2014, Anze Kopitar broke a 1-1 tie late in the second period of Game 7, ultimately the clincher in the Kings’ 5-1 win against the Sharks in San Jose.

“It’s a tough hill,” Los Angeles coach Darryl Sutter said after his team had gone down 3-0 with a Game 3 overtime loss. “But we won’t go quietly away, that’s for sure.”

A Los Angeles Times report of the Los Angeles Kings’ 2014 Game 7 win against the San Jose Sharks.

Defenseman Drew Doughty added, “We believed in ourselves from the first game and even though we went down 3-0, we were never going to give up. This is something we’re all going to remember for the rest of our lives. We’re not done yet, though.”

Prophetic words indeed, the Kings emerging from seven-game series against both the Anaheim Ducks and Chicago Blackhawks to win a five-game Cup Final against the New York Rangers.

So too was it on the road that the 2009-10 Flyers bounced the Bruins, rallying for a 4-3 win at TD Garden in Boston after having had one skate in a shallow grave.

“This is like a storybook,” said Flyers owner Ed Snider, who brought NHL hockey to Philadelphia with 1967 expansion that doubled the League from six to 12 teams. “How can you go down 3-0, then come back and beat them 4-3 in their barn? These guys are unbelievable. They just won’t quit. They’re incredible.”

A Philadelphia Inquirer report on the Philadelphia Flyers’ 2010 Game 7 road win against Boston. A Bruins fan (lower right) can’t bear to watch the Flyers celebrate at TD Garden.

Philadelphia would roll over the Montreal Canadiens in a five-game conference final before falling to the Blackhawks in the Cup Final in six games.

In Pittsburgh, Islanders goalie Glenn “Chico” Resch was unbeatable with 30 saves in New York’s 1-0 Game 7 win against the Penguins, completing a four-game rally on captain Ed Westfall’s goal to earn a date in the Cup Final against the Flyers. Philadelphia would win its second consecutive championship in 1975, but to do so it would need seven games against the Islanders, the teams splitting two overtime games.

“Beautiful,” Islanders coach Al Arbour said in the winners’ dressing room. “We were written off before the Rangers series (a preliminary round the Islanders won 2-1). We were written off when we were down by three games to the Penguins. This team doesn’t know what the word ‘quit’ means.”

A Florida Times-Union wire-service report of the New York Islanders’ Game 7 win against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Arbour was 9 years old when the 1941-42 Maple Leafs pulled off their stunning comeback; tradition said they had to, with their Cup-win-every-10-years streak on the line.

The Toronto St. Patricks won the NHL championship in 1922. The franchise then went without one until 1932, when the Maple Leafs, so named in 1926 by new owner Conn Smythe, won their first with a maple-leaf crest on their wool sweaters.

Winless again until 1942, down 3-0 to the Red Wings, Toronto roared back with four consecutive victories to claim the championship.

“By jiminy!” Maple Leafs captain Syl Apps exclaimed in the bedlam of his team’s dressing room after the game, a 3-1 victory at a raucous Maple Leaf Gardens.

Toronto captain Syl Apps hoists the “stovepipe” Stanley Cup on April 18, 1942, at Maple Leaf Gardens.

Rookie defenseman Bob Goldham, not yet 20, raced up to coach Hap Day and dug into his pocket, extracting a hairpin and the wishbone of a chicken.

“These are my two good-luck charms!” Goldham told his coach. “I’ve been carrying them ever since we won the fourth game of the series.”

The Red Wings were a little more than half a period from resisting the Maple Leafs’ remarkable rally that saw them stave off elimination three times to force Game 7.

Leading 1-0 on a second-period goal by captain Syd Howe, Detroit was overwhelmed by three goals in the third in a span of less than nine minutes: Sweeney Schriner at 7:47, Pete Langelle at 9:48 with what ultimately was the Cup-clincher, and Schriner again at 16:17.

The game attracted the largest crowd to watch a hockey game in Canada, a full decade before “Hockey Night in Canada” began its national TV broadcasts in 1952.

"Hockey Night in Canada" radio and later TV legend Foster Hewitt called the historic 1942 Stanley Cup Final; radio broadcast sponsor Imperial Oil Limited took out an advertisement in Canadian newspapers coast to coast to announce record listenership for Game 7.

A turnstile count of 16,218 improved by a few hundred the crowd that packed Maple Leaf Gardens on April 19, 1938, for the Memorial Cup junior final between St. Boniface and Oshawa.

"Hockey Night in Canada" radio sponsor Imperial Oil published a large newspaper ad a few days after the Maple Leafs’ improbable victory, boasting that Game 7 had attracted the largest listening audience in hockey history.

Imperial crowed that “an enormous radio public” of more than 2,600,000 -- nearly one-quarter of the country’s population -- “had heard Foster Hewitt’s vivid account of this epochal game!”

On the eve of Game 7, the Detroit Free Press morosely wrote of the “grim do-or-die spirit” of the Red Wings, who packed “only their will to win” on their train to Toronto.

The season came down to one final game, Detroit's express to the Stanley Cup having stalled on the rails.

Losers of three straight and a sudden-death underdog, Toronto’s momentum seemingly not to be denied, Detroit crashed historically, the first and only team to blow a 3-0 lead in losing the Final.

Top photo: Vegas Golden Knights’ Tomas Hertl celebrates his third-period goal against the Colorado Avalanche in Game 3 of the Western Conference Final on Sunday in Las Vegas.