It's further than the former Winnipeg Jets, now the Arizona Coyotes, got in their NHL years, 1979-80 to 1995-96. (The Coyotes got to Game 5 of the Conference Finals in 2012.)
Before that, the Jets won 3 Championships in the World Hockey Association: 1976, 1978 and 1979. They also reached the Finals, but lost, in 1973 and 1977. So in the league's 7 seasons, they made 5 Finals.
But the Stanley Cup has eluded Winnipeg, mainly because, from the League's founding in 1917 until 1979, and again from 1996 until 2011, the National Hockey League didn't have a Winnipeg team.
There was an amateur team named the Winnipeg Victorias, named for Canada's head of state at the time of their founding, Queen Victoria of Great Britain. There was also a Montreal Victorias, and they were rather successful as well. But they were named for their home venue, the 1st indoor ice rink in the world, the Victoria Rink -- but that was named after the Queen.
The Winnipeg Victorias won the Stanley Cup in 1896, 1901 and 1902. But when professionalism took over, the Vics stuck with the amateur side of the game, and won the Allan Cup in 1911 and 1912. The Allan Cup remains the trophy awarded annually to the national senior amateur men's ice hockey champions of Canada. The newly-crowned current champions are the Stoney Creek Generals of Hamilton, Ontario.
World War I put a lot of things on hold, and the Winnipeg Victorias did not survive. A new team, the Winnipeg Falcons, was chosen to represent Canada at the 1st Olympic ice hockey tournament, at Antwerp, Belgium in 1920. They won the Gold Medal. With the founding of the Winter Olympics in 1924, ice hockey has been a part of them ever since. (Field hockey is a Summer Olympic sport.)
Winnipeg has a long and glorious hockey history -- at the collegiate, junior and minor-league level. But at the professional level? No team in North America's "big four" sports represents a city that has waited longer to win a professional championship.
The Winnipeg Jets have never won the Stanley Cup. The City of Winnipeg has, with the Victorias. The last time was on January 23, 1902. That's 116 years and 4 months. How long has that been?
*
As you might have guessed, this is easily the farthest back I've ever done one of these, surpassing the record set when I did how long it's been since the Chicago Cubs won the World Series, which went back to 1908, until, of course, they finally won it again in 2016.
Hail the Champions: Dan Bain, center, a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame; Fred Scanlon, left wing, Hall of Fame; Fred Cadham, center; Rod Flett, point, a position that no longer exists; Magnus Flett, coverpoint, which also no longer exists; Tony Gingras, right wing; Charles Johnston, left wing; Burke Wood, rover, a position that no longer exists, eliminated when hockey went from a 7-man to a 6-man squad, sort of an ancient version of the "offensive defenseman"; and Art Brown, goaltender.
Bain, at the far left of the photo, with the mustache, was not merely their best player, but turned out to be their last survivor, living until 1962.
Their "trainer," the closest thing they had to a head coach, was Mark Hooper. Their "director," what we would now call a general manager, was Walter Pratt.
Other Hall-of-Famers played for the Victorias, but not on their 1902 Cup-winners: Jack Marshall, Herb Gardiner, and later New York Americans star Bullet Joe Simpson.
Professional hockey did not exist -- at least, not openly. Professional football barely did. Basketball had only recently reached its 10th birthday. Baseball was about to see the 2nd season of the American League challenging the National League, and men like Cy Young, Honus Wagner, Nap Lajoie and Ed Delahanty were dominant, while Christy Mathewson was on the rise, and Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth were yet to come.
Winnipeg was a far Western outpost of good hockey. Even baseball did not have much going on between the Mississippi River (St. Louis slightly beyond it) and the Sierra Nevadas (1902 was the year the Pacific Coast League was founded). No building housing hockey then, at any level, still stands; the oldest current one is believed to be Matthews Arena, home of Northeastern University in Boston, which opened on April 16, 1910.
Howie Morenz, Eddie Shore, King Clancy, Charlie Gardiner, Larry Aurie and Charlie Conacher would be among the dominant figures in the NHL in the 1920s and '30s. None had yet been born. Charlie's brother Lionel Conacher and Frank Boucher were toddlers.
There was no World Cup of soccer yet. Indeed, many of the great clubs had yet to be founded. The Olympic Games were still a new thing, having been held only in Athens in 1896 and Paris in 1900.
Canada was still very much a Dominion of Canada, and had 7 Provinces: Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Manitoba, British Columbia and Prince Edward Island. Saskatchewan and Alberta would not be converted from Territories to Provinces until September 1, 1905.
Newfoundland would remain a Dominion of Britain until it passed to Canadian control on March 31, 1949. Indeed, from 1923, when he began doing radio broadcasts of hockey games, until 1949, the 1st great broadcaster in the sport, Foster Hewitt, would sign on with these words: "Hello, Canada, and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland!"
America had 45 States. Oklahoma would be admitted in 1907, New Mexico and Arizona in 1912, and Alaska and Hawaii in 1959. There were 15 Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. There was no Food & Drug Administration, no Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, no Civil Rights Acts, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Environmental Protection Agency, no OSHA, no Title IX, no legal abortion, no gay marriage. Public officials, with a few Catholic and (very rarely) Jewish exceptions, were expected to be white, male, and Protestant.
The Prime Minister of Canada was Wilfrid Laurier, who took office in 1896 as the 1st PM of French descent, and the 1st Catholic to hold the office. The President of the United States was Theodore Roosevelt, just beginning his "Square Deal" program that would include the aforementioned FDA. Former President Grover Cleveland was still alive.
The Governor of the State of New York was Benjamin B. Odell. The Mayor of the City of New York was Seth Low, formerly the President of Columbia University, for whom their iconic library is named. The Governor of New Jersey was Franklin Murphy, no relation to current Governor Phil Murphy.
The Nobel Prizes had just been established. The 1st Peace Prize was split between Henry Dunant of Switzerland, for his role in founding the International Committee of the Red Cross; and French economist Frédéric Passy, the main organizer of the 1st Universal Peace Congress.
There were still surviving veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, the War of 1812, the Greek War of Independence, and the Texas War of Independence. Augusta Hejnek, born in Germany on December 25, 1799, and thus born in the 18th Century, was still alive in Casimir, Wisconsin. She lived on until 1908. Walter T. Avery, who played in what's long been recognized as the 1st official baseball game, in Hoboken, New Jersey on June 19, 1846, was still alive, and would live on until 1904.
It had been only 66 years since the Battle of the Alamo, 55 years since Buena Vista, 48 years since the Charge of the Light Brigade, 37 years since Appomattox, 26 years since the Little Bighorn, 23 years since Islandwana, and 17 since the Siege of Khartoum. A year later, American historian Frederick Jackson Turner would pronounce the American frontier "closed," but there was still something of the "Wild West" out there.
The Pope was Leo XIII. The Prime Minister of Great Britain was Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, popularly known as Lord Salisbury. The monarch of both Britain and Canada was King Edward VII. Sunderland, of the North-East, won the Football League Division One in the 1901-02 season. (As I'm trying to show you, this was a long time ago.) Sheffield United of Yorkshire needed a replay to win the FA Cup Final against Southampton of Hampshire.
There have since been 20 Presidents of the United States, 5 British Monarchs, and 11 Popes.
Major novels of 1902 included Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Immoralist by André Gide, The Wings of the Dove by Henry James, Brewster's Millions by George Barr McCutcheon, The Four Feathers by A.E.W. Mason, The Virginian by Owen Wister, The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, and, with L. Frank Baum taking a break from his Oz adventures, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. J.R.R. Tolkien was 10 years old. C.S. Lewis was 3.
There was no television. There was no radio broadcasting: Guglielmo Marconi had just figured out how to send a radio signal across the Atlantic Ocean -- from the West of Ireland to Newfoundland -- just 6 weeks earlier.
One of the earliest motion pictures with a fictional plot, and the very 1st science fiction film, premiered the following September: Director Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon, based on the writings of Jules Verne, who was still alive. The creators of James Bond (Ian Fleming), Superman (Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster), Batman (Bob Kane) and The Doctor (Sydney Newman) had not yet been born.
Opera star Enrico Caruso made the 1st recording to sell a million copies. But there were no music charts to determine what the Number 1 song in a country was. Popular songs of the year included Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" (later known as "The Theme from The Sting"), "Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home,""In the Good Old Summer Time,""Land of Hope and Glory,""Pomp and Circumstance,""Rip Van Winkle Was a Lucky Man," and "If Money Talks It Ain't On Speaking Terms With Me."
Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell were still alive and designing and building. Mohandas Gandhi was 32 years old, and a lawyer in South Africa.Winston Churchill was 27, but was already a war hero, a published author, and a Member of Parliament. Albert Einstein was 24, a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland, and unknown to the world. Also living in Bern at the time was an 18-year-old stonemason from northern Italy, Benito Mussolini. Josef Stalin was 23 and a committeeman for a Marxist political party. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was about to turn 19 and studying at Harvard University. Adolf Hitler was 12. Charles de Gaulle was 11. Mao Zedong was 8.
Bela Lugosi was 19, Irving Berlin 13, Groucho Marx 11, Cole Porter 10, Jack Benny 7, Moe Howard of the Three Stooges 4, and George Gershwin 3. Duke Ellington, Fred Astaire, James Cagney, Alfred Hitchcock and Humphrey Bogart were 2. Spencer Tracy was 1 1/2. Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Louis Armstrong, Ed Sullivan, Walt Disney and Marlene Dietrich were less than a year old.
Richard Rodgers, Larry Fine and Jerome "Curly" Howard of the Three Stooges, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Roy Acuff, Cary Grant, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Henry Fonda, Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Laurence Olivier, John Wayne, Gene Autry, Ethel Merman and Jimmy Stewart would all be born within the next 7 years.
Major novels of 1902 included Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Immoralist by André Gide, The Wings of the Dove by Henry James, Brewster's Millions by George Barr McCutcheon, The Four Feathers by A.E.W. Mason, The Virginian by Owen Wister, The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, and, with L. Frank Baum taking a break from his Oz adventures, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. J.R.R. Tolkien was 10 years old. C.S. Lewis was 3.
There was no television. There was no radio broadcasting: Guglielmo Marconi had just figured out how to send a radio signal across the Atlantic Ocean -- from the West of Ireland to Newfoundland -- just 6 weeks earlier.
One of the earliest motion pictures with a fictional plot, and the very 1st science fiction film, premiered the following September: Director Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon, based on the writings of Jules Verne, who was still alive. The creators of James Bond (Ian Fleming), Superman (Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster), Batman (Bob Kane) and The Doctor (Sydney Newman) had not yet been born.
Opera star Enrico Caruso made the 1st recording to sell a million copies. But there were no music charts to determine what the Number 1 song in a country was. Popular songs of the year included Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" (later known as "The Theme from The Sting"), "Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home,""In the Good Old Summer Time,""Land of Hope and Glory,""Pomp and Circumstance,""Rip Van Winkle Was a Lucky Man," and "If Money Talks It Ain't On Speaking Terms With Me."
Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell were still alive and designing and building. Mohandas Gandhi was 32 years old, and a lawyer in South Africa.Winston Churchill was 27, but was already a war hero, a published author, and a Member of Parliament. Albert Einstein was 24, a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland, and unknown to the world. Also living in Bern at the time was an 18-year-old stonemason from northern Italy, Benito Mussolini. Josef Stalin was 23 and a committeeman for a Marxist political party. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was about to turn 19 and studying at Harvard University. Adolf Hitler was 12. Charles de Gaulle was 11. Mao Zedong was 8.
Bela Lugosi was 19, Irving Berlin 13, Groucho Marx 11, Cole Porter 10, Jack Benny 7, Moe Howard of the Three Stooges 4, and George Gershwin 3. Duke Ellington, Fred Astaire, James Cagney, Alfred Hitchcock and Humphrey Bogart were 2. Spencer Tracy was 1 1/2. Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Louis Armstrong, Ed Sullivan, Walt Disney and Marlene Dietrich were less than a year old.
Richard Rodgers, Larry Fine and Jerome "Curly" Howard of the Three Stooges, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Roy Acuff, Cary Grant, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Henry Fonda, Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Laurence Olivier, John Wayne, Gene Autry, Ethel Merman and Jimmy Stewart would all be born within the next 7 years.
Inflation was such that what $1.00 bought then, $26 would buy now. A U.S. postage stamp cost 2 cents, and a New York Subway ride... was not possible, as it didn't begin service until October 27, 1904. Boston was the only American city with a subway at this point, having opened their 1st line in 1897. The 1st New York Subway fare was 5 cents, as that was the usual price of the Subway's predecessor, the elevated railways in Manhattan.
The early movie houses charged a nickel a show. There was no such thing as fast food, but most meats were around 14 cents a pound, bread 5 cents a loaf, and coffee 23 cents a pound. The average price of a new car varied, but could run between $500 and $1,000. A new house could be about $4,000. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was first tallied on July 14, 1896, and closed on January 23, 1902 at 64.01.
The tallest building in the world was City Hall in Philadelphia. Telephones existed, but hardly anybody had one in their house. There were no credit cards or automatic teller machines. Artificial organs were not yet possible. Transplantation of organs was not possible. The distribution of antibiotics was not possible: If you got any kind of infection, you could easily die. There was no polio vaccine.
There were no airplanes: Orville and Wilbur Wright were still working on it. In spite of the fiction of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, no one had yet launched a rocket toward space.
The early movie houses charged a nickel a show. There was no such thing as fast food, but most meats were around 14 cents a pound, bread 5 cents a loaf, and coffee 23 cents a pound. The average price of a new car varied, but could run between $500 and $1,000. A new house could be about $4,000. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was first tallied on July 14, 1896, and closed on January 23, 1902 at 64.01.
The tallest building in the world was City Hall in Philadelphia. Telephones existed, but hardly anybody had one in their house. There were no credit cards or automatic teller machines. Artificial organs were not yet possible. Transplantation of organs was not possible. The distribution of antibiotics was not possible: If you got any kind of infection, you could easily die. There was no polio vaccine.
There were no airplanes: Orville and Wilbur Wright were still working on it. In spite of the fiction of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, no one had yet launched a rocket toward space.
At the beginning of 1902, Berlin opened its subway, the Underground Railway (Unterbahn or U-bahn). The army of the newly independent (on January 26, 1901) Australian Army executed Lieutenant Harry "Break" Morant for abusing his authority, executing a prisoner of war for having killed his commanding officer in the Boer War. Madrid Football Club, forerunner of Real Madrid, was founded.
In America, the 1st college football bowl game was played, the Rose Bowl, in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena, California, and the University of Michigan was leading Stanford University 49-0 in the 3rd quarter, when Stanford quit. A train collision in the New York Central Railroad's Park Avenue Tunnel, leading to Grand Central Station (the predecessor to the 1913 Terminal), killed 17 people. A fire burned 26 blocks of Jersey City.
BASF founder Friedrich Engelhorn, and British-African imperialist Cecil Rhodes, and Baseball Hall-of-Famer Jim "Pud" Galvin died. King Saud of Saudi Arabia, and Tallulah Bankhead, and Langston Hughes were born. So were Charles Lindbergh, and John Steinbeck, and British Olympic track star Eric Liddell, memorialized in the film Chariots of Fire.
January 23, 1902. The Winnipeg Victorias won the Stanley Cup. It was the 3rd time a Winnipeg team had won the trophy.
It hasn't happened since. The current version of the Winnipeg Jets came within 7 wins of it this time. Maybe they'll be able to end the drought in the next few years.