Montreal Canadiens Dominate 1977 Stanley Cup Playoffs

By Author: Carmen Cameron
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The Stanley Cup Playoffs are the playoffs for the National Hockey League. The winner of the Stanley Cup Playoffs becomes the Stanley Cup Champion.

Over the years, the NHL has experimented with different playoff formats in order to make the playoff experience the best experience that it can possibly be. They have changed back and forth and employed several different ideas. In 1977 they had a format where the teams were not separated into conferences in order to determine seeding. The teams that were selected for the playoffs finished within the top 3 teams of their respective divisions. There were 6 teams from each conference and 12 teams total in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. This year the teams were seeded in a way where the best record was seeded as the top seed and the worst record was the lowest seed with descending order in between. Today in the NHL they employ a similar format, but they separate the bracket into conferences so the top teams from each conference will face off. The seeding in this year did not take conference into account.

The teams that qualified for the Stanley Cup Playoffs in descending order ...
... were the Montreal Canadiens, Philadelphia Flyers, Boston Bruins, New York Islanders, Buffalo Sabres, Los Angeles Kings, Pittsburgh Penguins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Atlanta Flames, St. Louis Blues, Minnesota North Stars and the Chicago Black Hawks.

The first round of play had a best of 3 games series format and each of the subsequent rounds used a best of 7 games series format. The first round went as expected for the most part with only one upset. The Islanders, Sabres and Kings all beat their lower seeded opponents, but the Toronto Maple Leafs were able to pull off a minor upset over the Pittsburgh Penguins, winning the series 2-1.

The second round continued the model of predictability that defined these playoffs. It is very common to see several upsets per round in the NHL Playoffs, but this season there were only two upsets during the entire course of the playoffs. The Montreal Canadiens easily disposed of the Blues, New York managed to put Buffalo away in 4 games, the Flyers beat the Maple Leafs in 6 games and the Boston Bruins took out the Los Angeles Kings 4 games to 2.

The next round of the playoffs is where things started to get a bit more interesting. There were only 4 teams remaining in the race and they were the top 4 teams during the regular season. The Islanders and Canadiens had both been perfect throughout the postseason to this point, sweeping their opponents. Neither team would manage to keep up their perfect streak in this round. The Islanders managed to take two games from the Canadiens, but it just wasn’t enough. The Canadiens ultimately won the series 4 games to 2.

The Flyers were the favorite over the Bruins, but the Bruins were clearly the better team in this series. The Bruins swept the Flyers to advance to the Stanley Cup Finals.

The Canadiens showed how much better they were than everyone else in the finals as the Bruins stood no chance. The Canadiens put them away to become the 1977 Stanley Cup Champions.

AUTHOR:-
Carmen Cameron writes reviews on various sporting events including the online sportsbook. In this piece of write up, the author highlights one of the most popular sports NHL and NHL betting. The author also takes the readers opinion on how hockey betting online occurs.