1975-76 to 1978-79 | The Last Dynasty

[CentreHice]

Arguably the most dominant team in history…when you look at the record.

A good place to start….the 4th game in the 1st round sweep of the Blackhawks in 1976. 4-1 final score. They show only Pete Mahovlich's eventual winner.

Beginning just after the 3:00 mark, Chicago play-by-play man Brad Palmer did a great job breaking down the reasons why he predicted the Habs were starting a dynasty.

Montreal is probably starting a new dynasty. They didn't get to the Finals either of their last two years, but….it looks like they're gonna be in the Finals this year. Very much so. Montreal will outdo you in just about any category in this game. They'll outskate you…they can outshoot you…they can out-goaltend you as they did this year. And they can outhit you. But they will not usually begin the hitting. The Blackhawks in Game 2 started to hit because they couldn't outskate 'em. Montreal was equal to the occasion..in fact, more so. This is a great hockey team…they've got size, they've got speed, they're a great defensive club besides having a good offensive line in that Mahovlich line.

At 9:43, Palmer takes his prediction further to Montreal beating the Flyers in the Final.

[CentreHice]

Not that Palmer's prediction was wild by any means….

Here's the Cup clinching period in Game 4 vs. Philly that year. Both Dryden and Lafleur needed police escort as they'd received death threats. Yep.

Score 3-3 entering the third. Cournoyer had scored late in the second period to tie it.

Sure, Parent was injured….but we were still the better team. The Flyers couldn't intimidate us, so they had to rely on hockey…and we beat them there, too.

Two Habs' goals, 58 seconds apart, did the trick….Lafleur from Mahovlich (start the clip at 21:45)…and Mahovlich from Lafleur (start the clip at 24:45).

[GNick99]

I can remember this series. Wasn't very old at the time. I was so happy at start of game 1, I was worried the world would end before we could start the playoffs. I remember asking my mother if the world was going to end. lol

Notice Cournoyer anticipating the draw to start the period, trying to get an edge on start of play. I forgot he use to do that.

We had many great series in the old Chicago building. I miss those old buildings, they had character

[Boston_Habs]

My heroes. Guy Lafleur, Larry Robinson, Bob Gainey, Ken Dryden.... I adored Yvon Lambert. Don't ask me why, I just loved him as a kid. Back in those days you had to buy individual numbers and sew them on the jersey and I had #11 home and away for the outdoor rink and street hockey.

Probably the most dominant team in the expansion era. They didn't have the top end offense like the Oilers and the Islanders were a gritty bunch, but when you think of all phases of the game, offense, defense, goaltending, skating, coaching those late 70s teams were the complete package and could beat you any number of ways.

But the sport has changed. Free agency, the cap, better goaltenders, a more systematic approach to the game. I don't think we'll ever see a team rip off 3-4 straight titles or 5 in a 7-year stretch like the Oilers did. And it's not just hockey. The Boston Celtics won 11 titles beween 1957-1969, incluing 8 in a row from 1959-1966! That will never happen again. The Steelers and 49ers had those great runs in the 70s and 80s. What the Patriots have been able to do is remarkable given how hard it is to sustain that level of success over a long period, but generally it's just so hard to keep a championship calibre team together for more than a few years.

[CentreHice]

2nd Cup winner in the string. Cup #20 in 1976-77. Knocked off Cherry's Bruins in 4 straight.

Our regular season record that year was 60-8-12. Playoff record was 12-2--losing both to the Islanders in Round 2. The play leading to Lemaire's winner starts at about 2:25. Thanks to Al Sims for kicking the puck free to Lafleur. Still can't figure out what he was thinking. He could've used his stick to fire it around the boards...Lafleur wasn't hounding him at all.

Cheevers leaving the ice, along with Gary Doak….skipping the handshakes. Always thought the story behind his "stitched" mask gave him more "fame" than did his actual play.

[CentreHice]

Nice article concerning the 1976-77 team in The Hockey News archives.

It might be difficult to believe, but the Montreal Canadiens actually had a losing record against the Boston Bruins in 1976-77. After one of those losses superstar Guy Lafleur said, “I will never accept losing. Never. The law of averages is bound to catch up with us, but that’s no excuse for a bad performance.”

And, that, in a nutshell, is what made the ’76-77 Canadiens the greatest collection of talent in the history of the game. The rest of the NHL provided Montreal such feeble competition that they had to fabricate it from within by challenging themselves to be better and more dominating every game. Practices, for the most part, were even more demanding than the games.

“When we scrimmaged, you were playing against the best players in the world,” recalled Peter Mahovlich, who lost his spot on the first line to Jacques Lemaire that season, despite posting a team-record 82 assists the year before. “You couldn’t help but get better because we had a bunch of guys who loved to be on the ice. Guy Lafleur loved to be on the ice. Steve Shutt loved to be on the ice. Larry Robinson loved to be on the ice and going at top speed. It was fun.”

The Canadiens opened that season with a 10-1 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins, finished it with a 2-1 overtime win over the Boston Bruins in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup final and in between they were the most electrifying, dominant and unstoppable team the NHL has ever seen. All told, they established 21 NHL records, including a 132-point performance that still stands as the league’s benchmark. Their goal differential of 216 is by far the best in NHL history, 40 ahead of the next-best mark, which was established by the Habs the following season.

They had nine players in the lineup who ultimately made their way to the Hockey Hall of Fame, along with coach Scotty Bowman and GM Sam Pollock. They became one of only two post-expansion teams (the 1970-71 Bruins were the other) to place four players – goalie Ken Dryden, defenseman Robinson, right winger Lafleur and left winger Shutt – on the first all-star team. The league might as well have held its awards ceremony at the Canadiens team banquet, since Lafleur won the Art Ross, Hart and Conn Smythe Trophies, Dryden and Michel Larocque the Vezina, Robinson the Norris and Bowman the Adams.

Had the Rocket Richard Trophy been in existence, Shutt would have taken it on the strength of a 60-goal season that established a record for left wingers at the time. The Selke Trophy was established the next season, when Bob Gainey won his first of four consecutive honors as the league’s best defensive forward.

When you consider Montreal’s dominance that season, you must look at it through the prism of a four-year run in which the Habs won four Stanley Cups and established themselves as arguably the most dominant dynasty in the history of the sport. In those four years, the Canadiens lost just 46 games. To put their 60-8-12 record in 1976-77 into perspective, they’re the only team in NHL history to play more than 60 games in a season and lose fewer than 10. In fact, prior to Montreal losing just 11 games the season before, the low-water mark for losses in a 60-plus game schedule was 13, by the 1950-51 Detroit Red Wings, who established the mark in 70 games.

But what made the Habs roster so impressive was that it was almost entirely homemade. With the exception of Mahovlich, every player on the roster was drafted or developed by Montreal. Dryden and Doug Jarvis were drafted by other teams, but were dealt to the Canadiens before their NHL careers even began.

And to trace the lineage of that team, you have to go back a few years prior to the 1970-71 season, when the Canadiens shocked the hockey world by stunning the powerhouse Bruins in the first round of the playoffs en route to the Stanley Cup. They did it with Dryden, a rookie goaltender who had originally been drafted by the Bruins in 1964. At the 1970 draft, Pollock traded Ernie Hicke to the California Golden Seals for a swap of first round picks and helped seal California’s fate as the last-place team by dealing Ralph Backstrom to the Los Angeles Kings at the deadline.

That allowed Pollock to draft Lafleur first overall, but then he took Murray Wilson 11th overall and Robinson in the No. 20 spot. With the 53rd overall selection, the Canadiens took Greg Hubick, whom they flipped to get the rights to Jarvis four years later. All of those parts, along with what was already a formidable lineup in its own right, combined to make the team a juggernaut.

And although it might seem like the Habs didn’t break a sweat that season, it wasn’t as though they threw on the pads and played shinny for 60 minutes. In fact, the Bruins defeated Montreal in each of their first three meetings that season before the Canadiens took the final two. Even though they played 86.5 percent of the time tied or in the lead, they trailed at one point in 21 of their 60 wins and in nine of their 12 ties. At one point in the campaign, they lost 7-2 to the St. Louis Blues and 7-3 to the Bruins in the space of five days.

But when the Canadiens won that season, they won big. They outscored their opponents by an average of almost 5-2 and 21 times that year they bested their opponent by five goals. Sixteen times the margin was six, nine times it was seven and four times they won by eight goals. And the scary thing about it was the Canadiens were so young. The only players on the roster who were older than 30 were Jimmy Roberts and Yvan Cournoyer, who was beginning to be plagued by back troubles that caused him to miss 20 games and the entire playoffs, and forced him into retirement a year later. Lafleur and Shutt were just 24, Robinson was 25, Gainey and Doug Risebrough were 22 and Mario Tremblay was just 19.

That youthful enthusiasm, more than anything, kept Montreal from becoming complacent. It also helped that practices were intense and competitive and that Bowman knew exactly what kind of mind games to play to keep the players on edge.

“It’s pretty simple,” Mahovlich said. “Scotty never allowed us to get bored. Everybody talks about all the talent we had. But one of the things Scotty did very well was he knew how to manipulate that talent to make sure that talent was ready to play every night.

“We always had two or three extra players around who could take your spot in the lineup and the team wouldn’t miss a beat. Even though we were winning all the time, even if you had bumps and bruises, you kept playing because you were scared to death of losing your spot in the lineup. When you go through the first half of the season and you’ve lost only four or five games, it’s the coach who creates the atmosphere where everybody is on pins and needles.”

If there was one downside to that season, it was the squad was so dominant it spelled the beginning of the end of Dryden’s career. He was 29 at that time and had won so much by such a great margin, that it was during that season Dryden began to contemplate new challenges in his life.

“This isn’t a complaint, but I didn’t enjoy last season very much,” Dryden said the next year. “We had a great team and a great record, but there were an inordinate number of games which we won without even a reasonable amount of difficulty. There were moments when we’d win a game and you’d go into the dressing room and there would be a certain amount of emptiness. Some guys would have to yell it up just to emphasize the fact we had won. “I’m happy we won as often as we did and lost only eight times. But I found myself spending increasing time thinking about what I want to do with my future.”

Perhaps it was a portent of things to come that the Canadiens’ only two playoff losses came to the New York Islanders that spring. It would be three seasons before the Islanders would usurp the Montreal dynasty with their first of four straight Stanley Cups.

As dominant as those teams were, however, they were not the 1976-77 Canadiens, the standard by which all other great teams in the NHL will continue to be measured.

[franko]

boy do they play that classic game 7 versus Boston on SN a lot. I love it!

there is NO WAY Lafleur scores that tieing goal today -- he'da never got the puck anywhere past those goal pads.

[Disgruntled70sHab]

Apr 3, 2015 14:41:16 GMT -5 CentreHice said:

Nice article concerning the 1976-77 team in The Hockey News archives.

It might be difficult to believe, but the Montreal Canadiens actually had a losing record against the Boston Bruins in 1976-77. After one of those losses superstar Guy Lafleur said, “I will never accept losing. Never. The law of averages is bound to catch up with us, but that’s no excuse for a bad performance.”

And, that, in a nutshell, is what made the ’76-77 Canadiens the greatest collection of talent in the history of the game. The rest of the NHL provided Montreal such feeble competition that they had to fabricate it from within by challenging themselves to be better and more dominating every game. Practices, for the most part, were even more demanding than the games.

“When we scrimmaged, you were playing against the best players in the world,” recalled Peter Mahovlich, who lost his spot on the first line to Jacques Lemaire that season, despite posting a team-record 82 assists the year before. “You couldn’t help but get better because we had a bunch of guys who loved to be on the ice. Guy Lafleur loved to be on the ice. Steve Shutt loved to be on the ice. Larry Robinson loved to be on the ice and going at top speed. It was fun.”

The Canadiens opened that season with a 10-1 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins, finished it with a 2-1 overtime win over the Boston Bruins in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup final and in between they were the most electrifying, dominant and unstoppable team the NHL has ever seen. All told, they established 21 NHL records, including a 132-point performance that still stands as the league’s benchmark. Their goal differential of 216 is by far the best in NHL history, 40 ahead of the next-best mark, which was established by the Habs the following season.

They had nine players in the lineup who ultimately made their way to the Hockey Hall of Fame, along with coach Scotty Bowman and GM Sam Pollock. They became one of only two post-expansion teams (the 1970-71 Bruins were the other) to place four players – goalie Ken Dryden, defenseman Robinson, right winger Lafleur and left winger Shutt – on the first all-star team. The league might as well have held its awards ceremony at the Canadiens team banquet, since Lafleur won the Art Ross, Hart and Conn Smythe Trophies, Dryden and Michel Larocque the Vezina, Robinson the Norris and Bowman the Adams.

Had the Rocket Richard Trophy been in existence, Shutt would have taken it on the strength of a 60-goal season that established a record for left wingers at the time. The Selke Trophy was established the next season, when Bob Gainey won his first of four consecutive honors as the league’s best defensive forward.

When you consider Montreal’s dominance that season, you must look at it through the prism of a four-year run in which the Habs won four Stanley Cups and established themselves as arguably the most dominant dynasty in the history of the sport. In those four years, the Canadiens lost just 46 games. To put their 60-8-12 record in 1976-77 into perspective, they’re the only team in NHL history to play more than 60 games in a season and lose fewer than 10. In fact, prior to Montreal losing just 11 games the season before, the low-water mark for losses in a 60-plus game schedule was 13, by the 1950-51 Detroit Red Wings, who established the mark in 70 games.

But what made the Habs roster so impressive was that it was almost entirely homemade. With the exception of Mahovlich, every player on the roster was drafted or developed by Montreal. Dryden and Doug Jarvis were drafted by other teams, but were dealt to the Canadiens before their NHL careers even began.

And to trace the lineage of that team, you have to go back a few years prior to the 1970-71 season, when the Canadiens shocked the hockey world by stunning the powerhouse Bruins in the first round of the playoffs en route to the Stanley Cup. They did it with Dryden, a rookie goaltender who had originally been drafted by the Bruins in 1964. At the 1970 draft, Pollock traded Ernie Hicke to the California Golden Seals for a swap of first round picks and helped seal California’s fate as the last-place team by dealing Ralph Backstrom to the Los Angeles Kings at the deadline.

That allowed Pollock to draft Lafleur first overall, but then he took Murray Wilson 11th overall and Robinson in the No. 20 spot. With the 53rd overall selection, the Canadiens took Greg Hubick, whom they flipped to get the rights to Jarvis four years later. All of those parts, along with what was already a formidable lineup in its own right, combined to make the team a juggernaut.

And although it might seem like the Habs didn’t break a sweat that season, it wasn’t as though they threw on the pads and played shinny for 60 minutes. In fact, the Bruins defeated Montreal in each of their first three meetings that season before the Canadiens took the final two. Even though they played 86.5 percent of the time tied or in the lead, they trailed at one point in 21 of their 60 wins and in nine of their 12 ties. At one point in the campaign, they lost 7-2 to the St. Louis Blues and 7-3 to the Bruins in the space of five days.

But when the Canadiens won that season, they won big. They outscored their opponents by an average of almost 5-2 and 21 times that year they bested their opponent by five goals. Sixteen times the margin was six, nine times it was seven and four times they won by eight goals. And the scary thing about it was the Canadiens were so young. The only players on the roster who were older than 30 were Jimmy Roberts and Yvan Cournoyer, who was beginning to be plagued by back troubles that caused him to miss 20 games and the entire playoffs, and forced him into retirement a year later. Lafleur and Shutt were just 24, Robinson was 25, Gainey and Doug Risebrough were 22 and Mario Tremblay was just 19.

That youthful enthusiasm, more than anything, kept Montreal from becoming complacent. It also helped that practices were intense and competitive and that Bowman knew exactly what kind of mind games to play to keep the players on edge.

“It’s pretty simple,” Mahovlich said. “Scotty never allowed us to get bored. Everybody talks about all the talent we had. But one of the things Scotty did very well was he knew how to manipulate that talent to make sure that talent was ready to play every night.

“We always had two or three extra players around who could take your spot in the lineup and the team wouldn’t miss a beat. Even though we were winning all the time, even if you had bumps and bruises, you kept playing because you were scared to death of losing your spot in the lineup. When you go through the first half of the season and you’ve lost only four or five games, it’s the coach who creates the atmosphere where everybody is on pins and needles.”

If there was one downside to that season, it was the squad was so dominant it spelled the beginning of the end of Dryden’s career. He was 29 at that time and had won so much by such a great margin, that it was during that season Dryden began to contemplate new challenges in his life.

“This isn’t a complaint, but I didn’t enjoy last season very much,” Dryden said the next year. “We had a great team and a great record, but there were an inordinate number of games which we won without even a reasonable amount of difficulty. There were moments when we’d win a game and you’d go into the dressing room and there would be a certain amount of emptiness. Some guys would have to yell it up just to emphasize the fact we had won. “I’m happy we won as often as we did and lost only eight times. But I found myself spending increasing time thinking about what I want to do with my future.”

Perhaps it was a portent of things to come that the Canadiens’ only two playoff losses came to the New York Islanders that spring. It would be three seasons before the Islanders would usurp the Montreal dynasty with their first of four straight Stanley Cups.

As dominant as those teams were, however, they were not the 1976-77 Canadiens, the standard by which all other great teams in the NHL will continue to be measured.

Enjoyed this read ... so many good triggers ... 76-77 Canadiens were the best team on the planet ...

Cheers.

[seventeen]

There was one stat that's very compelling and not well known. The checking line of Jarvis, Gainey and Roberts gave up something like 30 goals or so. I can't remember the exact number but it wasn't more than 40. The entire year. Against the best players on the opposition. I find that jaw dropping.

[CentreHice]

The 3rd Cup in the string.

Game 6, Boston Garden. May 25, 1978. 4-1 win. Dan Kelly with the play-by-play.

Houle always seemed to come up big in the playoffs….starting with his rookie year, 1971. A goal in Game 7 vs. Boston…the series winner vs. Minnesota.…plus the primary assist on H. Richard's Cup winner vs. Chicago….shadowing Bobby Hull along the way.

He shows nice hands here in delivering the DAGGER.

[seventeen]

Watched game 7, 1979 vs Boston. The game was so much more fun then. Very little hooking and holding. No Michelin men in goal, way more slap shots and open ice, just a lot more fun and it's not aging memory cells at work.

It was very pleasant watching us win again.

[CentreHice]

A few games in the 4th Cup run.

Finals, Game 4. Having won Game 2 in Montreal, and Game 3 in New York to take a 2-1 series lead, the Habs win Game 4 in OT, twice! Larry Robinson's shot goes off the post and up off the back bar. No video review. No goal. Claude Ruel goes nuts! I remember being incensed when I saw the replay. But the rage was short-lived, as Serge Savard won it on the next shift. What a horribly soft goal for Davidson….but he was likely not expecting Savard to shoot from the backhand. And how could the Rangers get caught like that in OT. Then again, we were a lightning fast transition team. A rare aggressive poke-check pass by Dryden started it off.

If Savard hadn't suffered two broken legs, we'd have seen a lot more of that out of him. To think that he changed his game to become arguably his era's best defensive D-man. Hockey IQ galore. Remarkable.


Dan Kelly with the play-by-play….Bobby Orr and Dick Irvin with colour.

[CentreHice]

Interesting that, as this video points out, Bowman decided to go with Larocque in Game 2, after Dryden didn't play very well in losing Game 1. But Larocque was injured during the warm-up, so Dryden went the rest of the way.

The Habs would win the next 4….


Here's the Cup winner, Game 5, in its entirety.






Battle-scarred Bob Gainey wins the Conn Smythe. Interviews with Brian Engblom and Bowman. PM Trudeau having some fun with the boys starting at the 6:20 mark.

[CentreHice]

This clip's finally online. From the 4th Cup in the string--1979. OT, Game 4 (completing the sweep) in Toronto, Round 2. We had a "bye" in Round 1. The Leafs had beaten the Atlanta Flames in a best-of-3 series.

Larry Robinson gets the winner on a PP, with Tiger Williams in the box for an obvious high-stick rake on Robinson's head.....

Williams tried to get at referee, Bob Myers, after the game....and it was Robinson who finally talked some sense into him.

In the next round vs. Boston, it was Myers who called Game 7....and Cherry wrote about it in one of his books....with his usual revisionist history and sore-loser illogic.

We were up 3-1 and the referee, who was Bob Myers, gave Dick Redmond, one of our defensemen, a penalty for cross-checking Jacques Lemaire--who he hardly touched, but he went down. (Actually, it was 3-2 at that time...and Redmond was called for hooking, which was obvious. Lapointe tied it on that PP.)

It's a strange thing, Bob Myers, he was also the ref that put Toronto out in the series before that. He gave Tiger Williams a penalty in overtime and Larry Robinson scored on the power play. Funny, eh? Same referee put out Toronto the time before--and us. (How exactly did Myers "put out Toronto"? Pretty blatant call. And how did Myers "put you out"? Your Bruins went ahead 4-3 late in the third period. Was Myers responsible for having too-many-Bruins on the ice, which led to Lafleur's tying goal? Was it Myers who stopped Brad Park from tying up Yvon Lambert's stick in overtime?)

[Disgruntled70sHab]

I remember seeing this back in the day ... I was surprised the puck went in and I remember when Dave Williams peaked ... here's the box score from that game ...

Cheers.

[CentreHice]

During that magical 1976-77 season (60-8-12), we faced the Blues in Round 2. We had a bye in Round 1.

4-0 sweep. Outscored St. Louis 19-4.

Here's a Lafleur hat-trick from Game 1. Slap shot, two-on-one finish, and a breakaway deke. Blues' goalie, Ed Staniowski (219-game NHL career, also with the Jets and Whalers)...fed to the wolves.




Lost only 2 playoff games...both to the Islanders in Round 3, who were starting to feel their oats...

Swept the Bruins in the Final on Jacques Lemaire's OT winner in Boston.

[blny]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cFHvchhefM