The Greatest Franchises in the History of the League (and why the Flyers are among them)

With each passing season new history is made. Some franchises improve, find success, write new stories which will later be passed along by fans and media alike. They add to their legacy. Other franchises don't do so well, and while tragedies also make for great stories and add a certain kind of mysticism and intrigue, it requires perseverance to suffer through them and find new glory rather than fail and sink into a swamp of misery.

As a fan of the Flyers I find it interesting how this year went. From the miserable start to a remarkable turnaround which saw them return to the playoffs after last year's absence. It is already a season to remember for it, and it bodes well for the future too. Captain Claude Giroux solidified his role on the team and his position as one of the premier forwards in the league, while a lot of the young talent that surrounds him is also improving and finding their place in the league. Throughout the season the Flyers have shown the resiliency that is required to be successful and the team has with it done their heritage proud.

The Flyers put together another winning season, and the franchise thus remains as the team with the 2nd best yield of points in the history of the league. This will also be the 38th time they will make the playoffs in 47 years of team history, or more than 80% of the time. And while they haven't won the Cup in a while, they are known to make a run with 8 appearances in the Stanley Cup Final, which is the 3rd most of all franchises since they entered the league (and until last year it was tied for 2nd most). The Flyers also have 16 division titles to their name.

They may not have as many Championships as I might like and some other teams do, but they are always a threat to look out for. And the longest lull in their history was a period of 5 years in the early 90s in which they missed the playoffs, but only once were they out of it by more than 4 points.

They are, to put it simple, the picture of constant high level play and continuous success. And even outside just being successful the Flyers have influenced the league, the Broad Street Bullies and the Lindros trade (probably the 2nd most significant trade in NHL history, after the Gretzky trade) just to name a couple of examples.

Still, some people seem to look at me incredulously whenever I exclaim how proud I to be rooting for one of the best franchises within the sport. In their mind, only teams from the Original Arbitrary Six have a claim at such a legacy, which I find strange considering that the expansion of the league began almost 50 years ago.

It appears to me that they are thinking solely in absolutes. Team X has more Cups/Playoff Appearances/Division Titles/1st place finishes etc. than Team Y so it is automatically better, and seem to simply neglect the fact that Team X has been around twice, sometimes three times as long. They also conveniently overlook the fact that it was easier for a franchise to win something back then than it is today. Now a team has to beat 29 other teams. Back then it was only five others.

Simply in the interest of fairness we have to handicap the Arbitrary Six to a certain extend, and if it's only dividing a teams success by the number of years of their existence.

But even taking such things into account I will easily admit that the Montreal Canadiens are the cream of the crop. They have won the Cup 24 times (as any Habs fan will pretty quickly remind you) and even after expansion they were a force to be reckoned with. They have the best points yield of any franchise throughout history and a slew of division titles and other accolades. However, their grasp on the power has been waning since their last Cup victory in 1993, with 7 missed playoffs and 7 first round exits since.

On the other hand, Canada's other A6 franchise should be excluded from the "great franchise" debate outright in my opinion. Yes, the Toronto Maple Leafs are no longer a great franchise, and haven't been for a while. They have won the Cup 13 times, but all these victories came when there were seven or fewer teams in the league On one occasion it was only four. It doesn't take a lot of math to figure out that even a base probability of a Cup win is much lower now that 30 teams are in the league.

What nails down the Leafs however is their lack of success ever since the 1967 expansion. They have not only failed to win a Stanley Cup, they have failed to even make it to the Final. In 47 seasons they have only won their division once and missed the playoffs 19 times. And since the lockout that ate the 2004-05 season they have only made the playoffs once, failing in spectacular and soul-crushing fashion in Game 7 to the Boston Bruins. Add in their horrifying collapse this year that rivals that of the New York Mets in 2007, I have a hard time believing that anybody still thinks of them as a great franchise.

This brings me to the Chicago Blackhawks, who are kind of the reverse Leafs. They were absolutely atrocious during the A6 era, qualifying only twice for the playoffs in 14 attempts between from 1944 to 1958. After that they made 28 consecutive playoff appearances from 1969 to 1997, but never managed to win a Cup losing in the Final three times. After another decade of losing and consistent bottom rung finishes they amassed talent through the draft and won the Cup for the 2nd time in four seasons last year.

A similar story is told by looking at the Red Wings, though with a higher peak. They were a force in the Original 6 era, and were a veritable Dynasty in the last two decades, managing to make the Final six times between 1994 and 2009. This year they qualified for the playoffs again, making it their 23rd consecutive year doing so.

However, separating those two runs was the "Dead Wings" era. In between 1966 and 1986, the Red Wings were perennial bottom dwellers, missing the playoffs 16 times and getting past the first round only once. They were the absolute laughingstock of the league and a shame to everything that came before.

For both the Hawks and Wings recent success is fine and dandy, but it can not overshadow their long bouts of futility entirely. A franchise has to live with its history. If I had to make a choice between the two, I would take the Red Wings. The Hawks could prove me wrong in the immediate future though.

The Boston Bruins also have a similar history, though their only true futile years were 8 seasons in the 60s in which they failed to qualify for the post-season. They also had kind of a lull through the 90s and 00s. However, 18 Division Championships and 9 appearances in the Final since the league expanded are a strong language, particularly if added to their recent Cup victory and last years appearance in the Final.

This leaves the New York Rangers, who are definitely a step below all teams named so far. The Original Arbitrary Six era was not kind to them, as they missed the playoffs 18 times in the seasons between 1942 and 1966. In the 6 years they managed to qualify, they made it out of the first round only once, and were then dispatched. There's also the infamous 54 year Cup drought from 1940 to 1994, with little to write about between those years or since that Victory twenty years ago. Even with the advantage of having played within a league that consists of only six teams they were incapable of amassing the accolades like their colleagues from the same era did. The Rangers are an old franchise. Successful is a different matter.

So with the Original Arbitrary Six covered, let's look at some more recent additions to the league.

The  New York Islanders and Edmonton Oilers are a curious case of symmetry. Both teams entered the league in the 70s, wear Orange and Blue, quickly established themselves as veritable dynasties, but have fallen flat ever since and are currently trying to rebuild through the draft. The Oilers have a little bit of a better claim, with one more Cup victory in their history, plus a somewhat miraculous Final appearance in the deviant post-lockout 05-06 season.

However, whatever capital both teams amassed through their dynastic years in the 80s is long gone, fallen by the wayside through years of losing and both teams have become the laughingstock of the league at one time or another through bad management. How the mighty have fallen.

From the 80s we jump to the 90s and 2000s, in which for the most part the Colorado Avalanche and New Jersey Devils split whatever the Red Wings left over.

While Wikipedia is trying to fool people by separating the seasons in Quebec and Colorado, the Avalanche are still the same franchise as the Quebec Nordiques and the Nordiques' years must be taken into account when looking at their franchise history. Make no mistake, the Avs won the Cup in their first season in Colorado because of the players amassed in drafts and trades made in Quebec so it is only fair to count the losing years of the Nordiques against the Avs franchise history. And lose they did often, collecting four consecutive 1st overall draft picks in the late 80s and early 90s.

The Avalanche made good use of those picks, and the rewards for trading away one of those draft choices named Eric Lindros and won two Cups, but the Avalanche never made another appearance in the Final since their last victory in 2001. Since then they have fallen off, but thanks to talented amassed in the drafts they seem to have returned to form. This hasn't delivered anything too outstanding yet, though it seems to be developing that way.

The Devils also once played in Denver, and Kansas before that, but all those years were miserable and hardly worth mentioning. Even after moving to New Jersey little happened, to the point where they were infamously declared to be a "Mickey Mouse franchise" by the best player to ever play the game. However, thanks to four appearances and three victories in the Stanley Cup Final over nine years they managed to get rid of that moniker. But those seemingly dynastic years are now in the rearview mirror and the franchise is running on the fumes of old glory. They had another appearance in the Final only two season ago, but the leading player in it, Ilya Kovalchuk has since "retired" from the league as well, leaving the Devils somewhat stranded, with Martin Brodeur, the last vestige of their glory days appearing to leave the franchise in the immediate future.

Finally, let's take a look at the nouveau riche of the NHL, the Pittsburgh Penguins. Since their incarnation the Penguins were a doormat up to them drafting Mario Lemieux, which was pretty much a race to the bottom with the Devils. The interesting thing though is that even with Lemieux in their lineup, there was little immediate impact. When they drafted Lemieux in 84, they had already missed the playoffs twice. They would miss it another 5 times in the next 6 years before winning two Cups, conveniently falling in between the end of the Oilers Dynasty, and the start of the triumvirate of the Red Wings, Avalanche and Devils. They also only managed to do that after luckily picking up another all-time great forward in Jaromir Jagr.

While continuous playoff appearances followed, the unfortunate illness of Mario Lemieux would put a dent into their hopes of regaining another Cup to the point were they traded an unhappy Jagr for players that never panned out. Mismanagement on both the financial and athletic side followed with the team becoming a bottom dweller just at the right time to pick up a couple more generational talents in Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby, a player they literally won in a lottery. Talk about lucky.

The little secret here is that even after putting up two more Stanley Cup Final appearances and another victory in it, and while retaining those two generational talents, the Penguins are far from threatening now. They have been routinely exposed by a variety of opponents in the playoffs as unfocused and easy to manipulate, and are thus less thought of as the team to beat than other recent Cup winners like Boston, Chicago or Los Angeles.


The NHL has a number of great franchises. I'm lucky to be a fan of one of the best of them as they can very much hang with any other franchise in terms of team success, pride, community and history. If you ask me, while the Canadiens are the clearcut all-time leader, they are slowly fading, and teams like the Flyers, Red Wings and Bruins are gaining on them. Of that pack I think the Flyers are a nose ahead, though that may be bias on my part speaking. The Bruins are improving though and may soon be in position to make a claim for it. However, saying that it isn't close is a mistake I don't think any fan should allow themselves.

Which franchise is truly the best ever can never be truly answered while the league is still running of course, which I hope it will for a long time. This leaves us with continuously adjusting a franchises reputation and whether their recent play solidified their legacy or brought shame on itself and took away from their history. However, this also keeps things interesting as a franchise can not simply rest on its laurels.