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1990 NHL playoffs

A Finals Run For The 1990 Boston Bruins

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The 1990 Boston Bruins were a talented team under a first-year head coach in Mike Milbury. The Bruins lived up to their potential, making their second Stanley Cup Finals in three years. Unfortunately, they played in The Age of Edmonton and lost to the Oilers for the second time.

GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTS
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Milbury replaced Terry O’Reilly, who had taken to the team to the Finals in 1988. No matter who was coaching, the success was built around two great players. Defenseman Ray Borque, one of the best of all-time, passed for 65 assists in 1990. Forward Cam Neely, a future Hall of Famer himself, scored 55 goals. The Bruins got quality goaltending from Andy Moog and steady support play from Craig Janney, Bob Carpenter and Bob Sweeney.

Boston got off to a good start, keyed by a 7-0-1 stretch in November that included wins over Edmonton, Los Angeles (where Wayne Gretzky now resided) and Buffalo (a fellow contender in the East). But the Bruins gave that ground back in December when they lost six of seven in what should have been a manageable portion of the schedule. They reached the New Year with a record of 21-15-3.

A five-game win streak to kick off January got them back in gear and Boston played consistent hockey the rest of the way. The Bruins finished the season with a record of 46-25-9, won the President’s Trophy for the best regular season record and had home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs.

The Hartford Whalers (today’s Carolina Hurricanes were up first) and had a good defense, along with some offensive firepower led by Pat Veerbeck and Ron Francis. The Whalers took two of the first three games and when they took a 5-2 lead after two periods in Game 4, the outlook for Boston looked bleak.

Their backs to the wall, the Bruins attacked and scored four goals in the third period. Two of them were from Dave Poulin, including the game-winner with 1:44 to play and the 6-5 win evened up the series.

Boston had been having goaltending problems through the first part of this series, and for some reason were giving backup goalie Reggie Lemelin equal time with Moog in an effort to find the hottest possible hand. Milbury stuck with Moog the rest of the way and it turned the tide. Boston scraped out a 3-2 win in Game 5 and even though they lost in overtime in Game 6, Moog came home for Game 7 and stopped 27/28 shots in a 3-1 win.

An ancient rival in the Montreal Canadiens was up in the second round. Montreal had a nicely balanced lineup, led by Hall of Fame defenseman Chris Chelios. But the real reason to fear the Canadiens was a goalie named Patrick Roy, who led his team to the fourth-best record in the NHL.

Instead, Moog would enjoy a career highlight in outplaying one of the great goalies of all-time. Boston won the opener 1-0, and then nailed Roy for 11 goals over the next two games, wins of 5-4 (OT) and 6-3. Even though the Bruins lost Game 4, they returned to the Garden in Game 5 and in a game tied 1-1 after two periods, got the lead on a goal by Glen Wesley. Neely sealed the 3-1 win late with a empty-net goal.

After the seven-game war against Hartford and the grudge battle with Montreal, the conference finals against the Washington Capitals was a bit anticlimactic. The Caps’ postseason history is checkered, to say the least and in 1990 they were a sub-.500 team. Beyond Dino Ciccarelli and Geoff Courtnall’s ability to light the lamp, these Caps didn’t have much.

It took a couple periods for Boston to assert themselves. But trailing 3-2 in the opener, Poulin again was a sparkplug. He scored two goals to key the 5-3 win. Moog took over from there, allowing only three goals in the next three games as the Bruins closed out a sweep.
The rematch of the 1988 Cup Finals with Edmonton was on hand, but the fact the Oilers no longer had Gretzky was no small difference. There was real hope in New England that the Bruins’ year had finally arrived. I still remember being at a friend’s house to watch Game 1…a game that went on interminably, into triple-overtime, before Edmonton won it.

The Oiler defense never let Boston get untracked. The Bruins were able to fight out a 2-1 win in Game 3, but they only scored eight goals in five games and it was never a series. A strong season ended with disappointment.

Milbury made it back to the conference finals in 1991 before losing to Mario Lemieux and the Pittsburgh Penguins. It was his final season as coach and the franchise’s long pursuit of a Stanley Cup continued until 2011, when Neely, now club president, finally put together the team that gave a hockey-crazed region its long-awaited Cup.

1990 Sports: NFL Upsets & College Football Chaos

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The San Francisco 49ers looked destined to win a third straight Super Bowl, an unprecedented achievement. Or, rather than destined, the Niners looked too good to be stopped. The New York Giants got in the way.

GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTS
Start reading today. 


Bill Parcells took his Giants’ team west for the 1990 NFC Championship Game and in a dramatic finish, got a 15-13 win without scoring a touchdown and winning on a last-second field goal. The three-peat bid was denied and still waits for the first team to pull off the feat.
Parcells’ team then matched up with the Buffalo Bills, who had an explosive offense and even the bad weather in their home city hadn’t stopped the Bills from dropping 95 points in two playoff wins. Buffalo was favored by more than a touchdown. Once again, New York pulled a rabbit out of their hat, this time watching an opponent miss a last-play field goal attempt to win or lose.
Read more about the 1990 New York Giants
College football didn’t have a heavy favorite the way the NFL did with the 49ers, but the collegiate year was even more chaotic. Teams got multiple chances at being #1 and a crazy New Year’s Night ended up with a disputed penalty call and a split national championship.
The ending might have been bizarre, but the ride was great, and the college football season was marked by the last installment of the great Notre Dame-Miami rivalry, with both schools involved in the national title discussion all year long. Their final game was a good one and the aftermath showed that the bad blood between the fan bases wasn’t going away just because the games were
That final Notre Dame-Miami game took place on the last night of the World Series. In a year where the NFL season was marked by consecutive big upsets and where the college landscape went into complete upheaval, can you blame baseball for wanting to get in on the upset fun? The Oakland A’s came into the 1990 World Series a heavy favorite to win a repeat title, and indeed the Fall Classic ended up in a sweep…only it was the Cincinnati Reds who won in four straight.
Read more about the 1990 college football season
Read more about the last Notre Dame-Miami rivalry battle
Read more about the 1990 World Series
The Edmonton Oilers had traded Wayne Gretzky after a Stanley Cup run in 1988 and a coaching change followed the 1989 season. The Oilers still had a lot of the same cast from the team that won four Cups in six years, but the changes were significant. Edmonton’s remaining players, starting with team leader Mark Messier, showed what they were made of when they won Cup—the fifth for the dynasty, but the first without Wayne.
In the NBA, the Detroit Pistons were another team with something to prove, but for different reasons. The Pistons, like the Oilers were a recent champion—in this case, the defending NBA champ. But Detroit wasn’t seen in the same light as their predecessors, Magic Johnson’s Los Angeles Lakers or Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics. Nor are the “Bad Boy Pistons” seen in the same light as their successor, Michael Jordan’s Bulls.
But the Pistons did show they weren’t a flash in the pan, not when they eliminated Chicago for the second straight year and not when they won a second straight NBA title by winning three straight road games in Portland.
Read more about the 1990 Edmonton Oilers
Read more about the 1990 Detroit Pistons
The NCAA Tournament had some great moments along the way—notably the East Regional, where UConn first won a Sweet 16 game on a last-second shot and then lost the regional final when the same was done to them. It was a heady finish to UConn’s first year as a serious contender for a national title.
But there was no drama in the championship game, only the celebration of greatness. UNLV won the first national title for head coach Jerry Tarkanian and did it by destroying Duke, 103-73.
Read more about 1990 UNLV basketball
Read more about 1990 UConn & The East Regional Drama
A footnote to the year that was 1990 sports was that two Rustbelt cities saw their teams make a big impact, and that was the Buffalo Bills reaching the Super Bowl and the Pittsburgh Pirates reaching the National League Championship Series. It looked like both teams were here to stay for a while as contenders, and that’s exactly what happened.
But unfortunately, neither would get the past level reached in 1990, as the Bills would continue to win AFC Championships (a record four straight), yet continue to lose in the Super Bowl. And the Pirates reached three consecutive NLCS’, and lost all three, each one more painful than the one that became before it.