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Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Detroit Red Wings 1944-45

NHL, the National Hockey League is a premier professional North American Sports League played in indoor stadiums. It’s divided into two conferences, each comprising of three divisions of ice hockey teams. The league was established in 1917 in Montreal, Quebec and it is composed of 30 teams out of which 24 teams are based in U.S. and 6 in Canada. They have a regular season and playoffs leading to the Stanley Cup, which is the NHL Championship final.

The Stanley Cup is one of the most-recognized symbols in North American sports. It is the championship trophy of the NHL, National Hockey League which is won by one of the teams that have qualified for the championship finals after playing a series of playoff matches. It is the only trophy in professional sports that has the name of the winning players, coaches, management, and club staff engraved upon it. The Cup winners keep it until the new champion is crowned.

Coming off a Stanley Cup championship and a dominating regular season in which they went 38-8-4, the Montreal Canadiens were considered shoo-ins to repeat their title. But in game 1 of the semifinals, Toronto got a shutout from goalie Frank McCool in his first ever playoff game. The Leafs stunned the Canadiens again, winning game 2 3-2. Montreal won two of the next three games to trim Toronto's lead to 3-2. In game 6, though, Toronto completed the stunning upset with a win and a trip to the Cup. In the finals, the Maple Leafs were again underdogs, this time against Chicago. McCool, though, played unbelievably in the net as he recorded three-consecutive shutouts to give the Leafs a 3-0 lead in the series.

Detroit finally got to McCool and won games 4, 5 and 6 to even the series. In deciding game 7, Toronto's Babe Pratt scored a power-play goal to give the Leafs a 2-1 lead and McCool hung on from there and the Leafs were Stanley Cup champions again.

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