It is the 1st Cup for the team born as the Atlanta Flames in 1972, moved to Calgary in 1980, and lost the Finals to the same Canadiens in 1986. It is the only time the Canadiens ever saw another team clinch the Cup against them at the Montreal Forum.
The Flames haven’t won the Cup since: Their only Finals appearance has been in 2004, losing to the Tampa Bay Lightning in 7 games, and lots of people believe that Cup was stolen.
30 years. How long has that been?
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Coached by Terry Crisp, who’d won the Cup as a player with the 1974 and ’75 Philadelphia Flyers, the Flames included 5 future members of the Hockey Hall of Fame: Captain Lanny McDonald (closing a 16-year, 500-goal career with Toronto, Colorado and Calgary), Joe Nieuwendyk, Doug Gilmour, Joe Mullen and Al MacInnis; plus All-Stars Brad McCrimmon, Gary Roberts, Theoren Fleury, Gary Suter, Joe Otto and Mike Vernon.
The NHL's Sun Belt experiment seemed to be over, and failed. But that's because the League was governed by a President, John Ziegler, and not a Commissioner, Gary Bettman, who loves the Sun Belt and hates Canada, and hates Canadian teams like the Flames. Especially the Flames, who were a Sun Belt team, but failed in Atlanta and then succeeded in Calgary.
The Pittsburgh Penguins, the New Jersey Devils, the team then known as the Quebec Nordiques, the team then known as the Minnesota North Stars, the team then known as the Hartford Whalers, the Los Angeles Kings and the Washington Capitals had not yet won their 1st Stanley Cup. The New York Rangers had not won the Stanley Cup since 1940, the Detroit Red Wings since 1955, the Chicago Blackhawks since 1961, the Boston Bruins since 1972.
The Penguins, the Kings, the Devils, the Nordiques, the Capitals and the Whalers, had not yet reached their 1st Stanley Cup Finals. The San Jose Sharks, the Ottawa Senators, the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Florida Panthers, the Anaheim Ducks, the Nashville Predators, the Atlanta Thrashers, the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Minnesota Wild and the Vegas Golden Knights did not yet exist.
The North Stars had not yet become the Dallas Stars. The Nordiques had not yet become the Colorado Avalanche. The Whalers had not yet become the Carolina Hurricanes. The old Winnipeg Jets had not yet become the Phoenix (later Arizona) Cardinals. The Thrashers had not yet become the 2nd team to fail in Atlanta, after the Flames, and had not yet become the new Winnipeg Jets.
All of those facts have since changed.
The defining players of my childhood were all retired, except for Guy Lafleur (who came out of retirement), Larry Robinson and Bryan Trottier. Martin Brodeur was in high school. Patrick Elias was 13 years old. Zdeno Chara was 12. Henrik Zetterberg was 8. Henrik Lundqvist was 6. Andy Greene was 5. Rich Nash and Marc-Andre Fleury were 4. Alexander Ovechkin, Jonathan Quick and Cory Schneider were 3. Evgeni Malkin and T.J. Oshie were 2. Sidney Crosby and Carey Price were a year and a half. Claude Giroux, Jnathan Towes and Brad Marchand were 1. Patrick Kane was 6 months old. P.K. Subban was 12 days old. Braden Holtby, Steven Stamkos, John Tavares and Taylor Hall weren't born yet.
The Flames were coached by Terry Crisp, who became one of the few men to have won the Cup as a player and as a head coach. He had won with the Philadelphia Flyers in 1974 and '75. He is about to turn 76, and is retired from an active role in the sport. In 1989, current Flames coach Bill Peters was at Red Deer College in Alberta.
Pat Shurmur of the Giants was an assistant coach at Michigan State University. Barry Trotz of the Islanders was a scout for the Washington Capitals. Domenec Torrent of New York City FC was playing at Guixols in Spain. David Quinn of the Rangers was out of hockey due to a long-term illness. Kenny Atkinson of the Nets was at the University of Richmond. Aaron Boone of the Yankees, David Fizdale of the Knicks, Katie Smith of the Liberty and Chris Armas of the Red Bulls were in high school. Mickey Callaway of the Mets and John Hynes of the Devils were in junior high. Adam Gase of the Jets was 11 years old.
The same day, a few hours earlier, AC Milan of Italy had won the European Cup Final, demolishing Steaua Bucuresti of Romania 4-0. Argentina had won the most recent World Cup, and the Netherlands the previous year's European Championship. The next day, Arsenal of North London would win the Football League title in the most dramatic fashion imaginable, beating Liverpool away with a goal in the last minute of the last game of the season, defeating the defending Champions, who had just won the FA Cup following the tragedy of the Hillsborough Stadium Disaster the month before.
In North American major league sports, the defending World Champions in baseball were the Los Angeles Dodgers, the San Francisco 49ers had won the last Super Bowl, the defending NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers were about to be dethroned by the Detroit Pistons, and, the night before, the Calgary Flames had beaten the Montreal Canadiens, interrupting the Edmonton Oilers' Stanley Cup dynasty.
Of the 21 teams then in the National Hockey League, only the Flames and the New York Rangers are still playing in the same buildings in which they played the 1988-89 season. The Flames are looking to get out of the Olympic (now Scotiabank) Saddledome and into a new arena, and the Rangers' hand may be forced by the lease on Madison Square Garden.
The Olympic Games have since been held in America twice, Canada, France, Norway, Japan, Greece, Italy, China, Britain, Russia, Brazil and Korea. The World Cup has since been held in America, Italy, France, Japan, Korea, Germany, South Africa, Brazil and Russia.
The idea that the Iron Curtain would fall was no longer a ridiculous one. Ideas still considered ridiculous included the idea that a President of the United States would collaborate with the Russians, a black man could be President, that people of the same gender could marry each other, and that corporations were "people" and entitled to the rights thereof.
The President of the United States was George H.W. Bush. Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter. Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, their wives, and the widows of Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy were still alive.
Bill Clinton was the Governor of Arkansas. George W. Bush had just bought baseball's Texas Rangers. Barack Obama was working at a law firm in Chicago, and was about to meet Michelle Robinson, who would become his wife. Donald Trump was a racist slumlord, cheating on his 1st wife with his 2nd. Outside New York City, he was mainly known as the guy who killed the United States Football League.
The Governor of the State of New York was Mario Cuomo, whose son, Andrew, the current Governor, was running a foundation designed to help poor people obtain low-cost housing. The Mayor of the City of New York was Ed Koch. Manhattan Borough President David Dinkins was running to defeat him, and the current Mayor, Bill de Blasio, was one of his aides. (Dinkins won.) The Governor of the State of New Jersey was Tom Kean. The current Governor, Phil Murphy, was working at Goldman Sachs.
The Prime Minister of Canada was Brian Mulroney, and of Britain Margaret Thatcher. The head of state of both nations was Queen Elizabeth II -- that hasn't changed. The United Nations Peace-Keeping Forces had just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Pope was John Paul II. The current Pope, Francis, was in graduate school at Sankt Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology in Frankfurt, Germany. There have since been 6 Presidents of the United States, 6 Prime Ministers of Britain, and 3 Popes.
There were still living veterans of the Spanish-American, Boer and Russo-Japanese Wars. There were still living survivors of the Johnstown Flood, the Galveston Hurricane, the Iroquois Theatre Fire, the General Slocum fire, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, and the sinking of the Titanic.
Major novels of 1989 included Total Recall by Piers Anthony, Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy, Billy Bathgate by E.L. Doctorow, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, A Time to Kill by John Grisham, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean, While My Pretty One Sleeps by Mary Higgins Clark and Daddy by Danielle Steel.
All were made into major motion pictures, except the last two: Clark's and Steele's novels tend to get adapted for television instead, and these were, as well. Daddy starred Patrick Duffy and Lynda Carter. The site of Bobby Ewing and Wonder Woman making out was shocking, even when I remembered that, when Lynda was playing Wonder Woman, Patrick was playing another superhuman, starring in the Aquaman ripoff The Man From Atlantis.
Also published that year was Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. As yet, it has not been filmed. Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth became a TV miniseries. John Irving's 1989 novel A Prayer for Owen Meany, itself an American rewrite of Gunter Grass' The Tin Drum, was seriously reworked for the film Simon Birch.
Stephen King published The Dark Half. George R.R. Martin published The Skin Trade. J.K. Rowling was working as a researcher for Amnesty International.
Gene Roddenberry was putting Star Trek V: The Final Frontier together. George Lucas and Steve Spielberg had just released Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade -- which, of course, turned out not to be Indy's last "crusade." Christopher Reeve was the most recent live-action Superman. Michael Keaton was about to begin playing Batman. The original run Doctor Who was about to be canceled, with Sylvester McCoy as The Doctor. Timothy Dalton was playing James Bond for the 2nd and last time, in Licence to Kill. Major films released in the Spring of 1989 included the baseball-themed Major League and Field of Dreams, Say Anything... , Scandal, Earth Girls Are Easy, Road House and Dead Poets Society.
The Arsenio Hall Show, Coach and Quantum Leap had recently premiered. The 1st episode of Seinfeld was 40 days away. The British children's show Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends had just premiered on American TV, under the title Shining Time Station.
No one had yet heard of Deadpool, the Seinfeld Four, Buffy Summers, Alex Cross, Fox Mulder & Dana Scully, Andy Sipowicz, Jay & Silent Bob, Ross Geller & Rachel Greene, Doug Ross, Alan Partridge, Bridget Jones, Xena, Ash Ketchum, Austin Powers, Carrie Bradshaw, Tony Soprano, Jed Bartlet, Robert Langdon, Master Chief, Jack Bauer, Omar Little, Rick Grimes, Wynonna Earp, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Michael Bluth, Lisbeth Salander, Bella Swan, Michael Scott, Don Draper, Katniss Everdeen, Walter White, Jax Teller, Richard Castle, Leslie Knope, Sarah Manning, Jane "Eleven" Hopper or Maggie Bell.
Kris Jenner was still married to Robert Kardashian Sr. I don't know if she had yet met the person then known as Bruce Jenner.
The Number 1 song in America was "Forever Your Girl" by Paula Abdul. Paul McCartney released his album Flowers in the Dirt, Bob Dylan Oh Mercy, Tom Petty Full Moon Fever, Stevie Ray Vaughan In Step, Richard Marx Repeat Offender, Clint Black Killin' Time, Soul II Soul Club Classics Vol. One, 10,000 Maniacs Blind Man's Zoo, Queen their last album The Miracle, Nirvana their debut album Bleach, and both Garth Brooks and the Stone Roses released self-titled debut albums.
Inflation has been such that what $1.00 would buy then, $2.06 would buy now. A postage stamp cost 25 cents. A single ride on the New York Subway cost $1.00, and on the London Underground £1.30. The average price of a gallon of gas was $1.06, a cup of coffee $1.41, a McDonald's meal (Big Mac, fries, shake) $5.28, a movie ticket $3.96, a new car $14,372, and a new house $144,300. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed that day at 2,493.77.
The tallest building in the world was the Sears Tower in Chicago. The Atari 5200 SuperSystem was the leading home video game system. Mobile telephones were still big and bulky, too much so to fit in your pocket. Personal computers were now in a majority of homes, but the Internet as we know it had not yet been developed. There was no World Wide Web, no Netscape, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, no Pinterest, no Skype.
In the Spring of 1989, Prime Minster Thatcher introduced a local government tax, which resulted in angry demonstrations throughout Britain. Border wars were fought between South Africa and Namibia, and between Senegal and Mauritania. There were food riots in Argentina. Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita of Japan resigned in a stock-trading scandal.
The first cracks in the Iron Curtain came, as Hungary dismantled barbed wire fencing along its border with Austria. Poland had its first free elections since before World War II. But Red Army soldiers killed 20 people in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. Fighting broke out in Uzbekistan between Uzbeks and their Turkish minority. A natural gas explosion killed 645 people on trains near the Russian city of Ufa. And over 2,000 pro-democracy demonstrators were killed in the Chinese capital of Beijing.
In America, the Savings & Loan Scandal broke. A gun turret exploded on the battleship USS Iowa, killing 47 crewmembers. And a controversy erupted over a museum exhibit of explicit photographs taken by the late Robert Mapplethorpe.
Lucille Ball, and Abbie Hoffman, and Gilda Radner died. So did the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, religious dictator of Iran, whose funeral led to chaos. So did Christine Jorgensen, the 1st person to undergo what was then called a "sex change," but would now be called "gender reassignment surgery." So did boxing legend Sugar Ray Robinson. Chris Brown, and Cam Newton, and Rob Gronkowski were born.
May 25, 1989. The Calgary Flames won the Stanley Cup. It has not happened since.
Will it happen again anytime soon? They did win their Division this season, but lost in the 1st round of the Playoffs. And, as we have seen, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is very hostile to Canadian teams, having already cheated the Flames out of the 2004 Stanley Cup. Stay tuned.
The first cracks in the Iron Curtain came, as Hungary dismantled barbed wire fencing along its border with Austria. Poland had its first free elections since before World War II. But Red Army soldiers killed 20 people in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. Fighting broke out in Uzbekistan between Uzbeks and their Turkish minority. A natural gas explosion killed 645 people on trains near the Russian city of Ufa. And over 2,000 pro-democracy demonstrators were killed in the Chinese capital of Beijing.
In America, the Savings & Loan Scandal broke. A gun turret exploded on the battleship USS Iowa, killing 47 crewmembers. And a controversy erupted over a museum exhibit of explicit photographs taken by the late Robert Mapplethorpe.
Lucille Ball, and Abbie Hoffman, and Gilda Radner died. So did the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, religious dictator of Iran, whose funeral led to chaos. So did Christine Jorgensen, the 1st person to undergo what was then called a "sex change," but would now be called "gender reassignment surgery." So did boxing legend Sugar Ray Robinson. Chris Brown, and Cam Newton, and Rob Gronkowski were born.
May 25, 1989. The Calgary Flames won the Stanley Cup. It has not happened since.
Will it happen again anytime soon? They did win their Division this season, but lost in the 1st round of the Playoffs. And, as we have seen, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is very hostile to Canadian teams, having already cheated the Flames out of the 2004 Stanley Cup. Stay tuned.