Few things are more exciting in sports than an incredible comeback. There's nothing quite like overcoming the odds and pulling out a victory from the jaws of defeat. So, how much do you know about the best come-from-behind wins in sports history? Find out by taking our quiz below.
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Winnipeg Jets sniper Patrik Laine is excited to hopefully get back on the ice this summer and compete for the Stanley Cup, but he knows his game won't pick up where it left off.
"My game is probably gonna look terrible since I haven't skated for two months," Laine said on a video conference call Friday, according to The Canadian Press. "It's always a struggle to come back after a long period when you haven't skated."
The NHL is reportedly voting on a 24-team playoff format that'll be used if the league returns to finish the 2019-20 season. Under the proposed format, the Jets would take on the Calgary Flames in a best-of-five play-in series.
Despite the potential expanded field, tougher path to the title, and the likelihood of being quarantined in a hub city, Laine is simply looking forward to competing.
"I just want to play, and I can do whatever format they decide. It's still hockey, but I don't mind the format. It's not an issue for me," Laine said. "I'll have to bring my computer so that I can play some video games. It will be boring, but if that's what it requires to play hockey this summer, that's fine with me. I don't mind and I don't need to go anywhere but my hotel room. So that would be just normal for me on the road.
"If that's necessary, I don't mind it."
The 22-year-old was having a solid season before the pause, recording 28 goals and 35 assists in 68 games.
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With the NHL reportedly in the midst of voting on an unprecedented 24-team playoff format, clubs weren't willing to give two of the league's biggest stars an easy chance to disrupt the postseason.
"The league initially suggested this play-in round be best two out of three and the players said no way," Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman said Friday on Sportsnet 590's "Lead Off." "They felt it was not acceptable enough for the teams that had a better regular season and Pittsburgh looked at its matchup and it said 'two out of three against Carey Price is not fair for a team that had zero percentage points to play in the playoffs.'"
Friedman added: "If the players feel that way, the players feel that way. They're the guy that they gotta shoot against and they clearly believe that he is a difference-maker ... The players fought the two-out-of-three because of him."
Under the current proposed 24-team format, the Pittsburgh Penguins would be tasked with facing the 24th-placed Montreal Canadiens in a best-of-five play-in series. The Penguins were nearly guaranteed a playoff berth at the time of the season's pause on March 12, whereas the Canadiens seemed destined for a lottery pick.
Price has a career .914 save percentage in the playoffs and is widely seen as the league's best goaltender despite his lackluster play of late. He was voted the best goalie by his peers in the 2019-20 NHLPA player poll.
Similar sentiments were felt in the Western Conference about Patrick Kane and the Chicago Blackhawks in a short series.
"I did hear that the Western teams - and now it's going to be Edmonton - they were like, 'two out of three with Patrick Kane? I mean come on.' But it wasn't at the same level as Price."
Friedman added that the results of the vote on the proposed 24-team format are expected to be known on Friday evening or Saturday.
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Over the years, North America's "Big Four" leagues - the NFL, NHL, NBA, and MLB - have seen powerhouses reach their respective summits and then knock off challengers for years to come.
When a team accrues enough continued success in an era, it eventually elevates to "dynasty" status, which defines its dominance from a historical perspective.
But the question remains: Which dynasties reign supreme above others? Here's our top 10.
Years of dynasty: 1970-79
Championships won: 2
You know a team is incredible when it's bestowed a nickname like the "Big Red Machine."
To this day, the 1970s Cincinnati Reds are regarded as one of the greatest sides in baseball history. Those Reds won two World Series titles and claimed four National League pennants thanks to a revered lineup known as "The Great Eight" - Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, Joe Morgan, Dave Concepcion, Ken Griffey, Cesar Geronimo, George Foster, and, of course, Pete Rose, MLB's all-time hits leader.
Rose remains permanently ineligible for the Hall of Fame due to his gambling scandal, but that doesn't erase his and the Reds' dominance.
Years of dynasty: 1970-79
Championships won: 6
An injury to starting goaltender Rogie Vachon late in the 1970-71 campaign provided Ken Dryden with an opening to seize the Montreal Canadiens' No. 1 role. After posting an impressive 1.65 goals-against average in six regular-season appearances, Dryden got the call in the playoffs and won the Conn Smythe Trophy for backstopping the Habs to their first Cup of the '70s.
Dryden would remain in goal for the team's remaining five championships that decade, but he was far from the only big-time contributor. Right winger Guy Lafleur recorded at least 119 points in five straight seasons during the Canadiens' dominant run, leading the NHL in scoring on three occasions. Meanwhile, the blue line featured Hall of Famers Guy Lapointe, Serge Savard, and Larry Robinson.
With Scottie Bowman, the league's all-time winningest coach, behind the bench for eight seasons, the Canadiens were loaded from top to bottom.
Years of dynasty: 1974-79
Championships won: 4
The hiring of Chuck Noll in January 1969 laid the groundwork for the Pittsburgh Steelers' most prosperous era. The legendary head coach was influential in the club's draft selections of Terry Bradshaw, "Mean" Joe Greene, and Lynn Swann, who would lead Pittsburgh's march through the league during the mid-to-late '70s.
Behind the famed "Steel Curtain" defense, the Steelers became the only NFL team to win four Super Bowls in six years. In Super Bowl IX, Pittsburgh held the Minnesota Vikings to 17 rushing yards and a record-low 119 total yards in a 16-6 victory. A year later, defensive end L.C. Greenwood set a Super Bowl record with four sacks in the Steelers' 21-17 triumph over the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl X.
Years of dynasty: 1979-1984
Championships won: 4
The New York Islanders became the second team in NHL history to hoist Lord Stanley in four consecutive seasons. While the Canadiens had completed the same feat immediately prior, New York had to win an extra playoff series in each of their Cup runs. In 1979-80, the NHL's expansion led to a revamped playoff format, which eliminated the first-round bye that had been given to each division winner.
During the Islanders' dominant four-year span, the club was never pushed beyond a Game 6 in any series. New York's "Drive For Five" ended in the 1984 Stanley Cup Final against the Wayne Gretzky-led Edmonton Oilers. The defeat gave way to hockey's next dynasty and snapped the Islanders' streak of 19 consecutive playoff series wins - still a record in North American professional sports.
Years of dynasty: 1996-2001
Championships won: 4
With their "Core Four" of Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, and Mariano Rivera, along with legendary skipper Joe Torre, the New York Yankees were a turn-of-the-millennium juggernaut. During their six-season reign, every World Series but one saw them represent the American League. The team's 114 wins during the 1998 regular season still stand as the third-highest total in MLB history.
The Yankees' pitching during that dynasty is another element that perfectly encapsulates the team's dominance. Of the 23 perfect games thrown in MLB history, only two were recorded between 1996 and 2001. They were both thrown by Yankees pitchers: David Wells in 1998 and David Cone in 1999.
Years of dynasty: 1983-90
Championships: 5
Equipped with two of the greatest players ever in Gretzky and Mark Messier, the Oilers dominated the NHL during the '80s. Gretzky was unlike anyone else in hockey history; from 1983-84 to his final season in Edmonton in 1987-88, "The Great One" tallied 314 goals, 646 assists, and won both the Hart Memorial Trophy and Art Ross Trophy four times. Even after the team incredulously dealt Gretzky away in 1988, Messier carried the Oilers back to hockey's peak in 1990, sweeping Gretzky's Los Angeles Kings en route to another Stanley Cup win.
Edmonton hasn't won a Cup since then, but their dynasty hasn't been forgotten. In 2017, the 1984-85 squad was voted by fans as the greatest NHL team ever assembled.
Years of dynasty: 1979-89
Championships won: 5
Despite the Los Angeles Lakers' roster already featuring an all-time great in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, it was a rookie in Magic Johnson who got the franchise over the hump in 1979-80 and kick-started one of the greatest eras in NBA history. With Johnson pulling the strings for the up-tempo "Showtime" Lakers, the club won five championships in eight Finals appearances during a 10-year span.
Hall of Famer James Worthy joined the fray in 1982-83, further bolstering an embarrassment of riches at the offensive end. Meanwhile, head coach Pat Riley was the perfect person to manage the team's personnel. With his slicked-back hairstyle and Armani suits, there wasn't another bench boss who could have embodied the Hollywood culture quite like Riley.
Years of dynasty: 1956-69
Championships won: 11
After drafting Bill Russell second overall in 1956, the Boston Celtics immediately ushered in the most successful period in franchise history. With icons like Bob Cousy, John Havlicek, and Tom Heinsohn, among others, playing under Hall of Fame coach Red Auerbach, Boston made the NBA Finals in 10 consecutive seasons. In fact, after Russell was drafted, the only NBA title Auerbach failed to win was in 1958, when the Celtics lost to the St. Louis Hawks in The Finals.
Even after Auberbach retired in 1966, the Celtics continued to win. That was thanks to Russell stepping in as player-coach for the next three seasons and leading the franchise to another two championships.
Years of dynasty: 2001-2019
Championships won: 6
The duo of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick led the New England Patriots to unprecedented success over nearly two decades. With the legendary quarterback and coach in the fold, the club won six Super Bowl championships - including three of the last six - to tie the Steelers for the NFL's all-time lead. After Brady took over as the starter in 2001, the Pats never posted a losing season and failed to register double-digit wins just once. Now, Belichick will look to extend that run of success with a new QB under center.
With Brady and Belichick, New England was always a virtual lock to claim the AFC East, capturing 17 of the past 19 divisional crowns. While the Pats' 2007 campaign didn't have its perfect ending, the team did go 16-0 to become the only undefeated side in NFL history after the regular season expanded to 16 games.
Years of dynasty: 1991-98
Championships won: 6
Nobody had a hold on the NBA throughout the '90s like Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls did.
After the Bulls finally beat their hated rivals, the Detroit Pistons, in the 1991 Eastern Conference finals - with a sweep, no less - there was no team left that could stop them. Chicago quickly dispatched the Los Angeles Lakers in that year's Finals and then claimed another five using two separate three-peats.
Jordan's minor-league baseball break from 1993-95 and the front office's hesitance to keep the team together past 1998 were the only things that stopped the Bulls from dominating the entire decade.
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Welcome to Puck Pursuit, an interview-style podcast hosted by John Matisz, theScore's national hockey writer.
Subscribe to the show on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Spotify.
Riley Cote, a former NHL forward, joins the show to discuss a variety of topics, including:
... and more!
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E.J. Johnston - founder of the new three-on-three hockey league, 3ICE - said last year that the players and coaches who participate will be familiar faces, and he has yet to disappoint.
Grant Fuhr, Bryan Trottier, Guy Carbonneau, Larry Murphy, Angela Ruggiero, John LeClair, Joe Mullen, and Ed Johnston round out the group of coaches for the league's eight teams. In total, they've combined for 23 Stanley Cup victories and six of the eight have made their way into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
The three-on-three league is set to debut in June 2021 and travel across North America where teams will play in bracket-style tournaments in different cities every weekend.
"We’re anticipating that we’re going to be able to have a lot of exciting hockey," league commissioner Craig Patrick said, according to USA Today's Chris Bumbaca. "Even more than the NHL’s overtime format, because we’re going to go for a lot of speed and skill throughout and we’re going to look at different rules that enable that to happen more frequently in our game."
While the players remain unknown, Johnston believes he'll be able to attract a good group to join his league. He described the ideal 3ICE participants as "shorter, faster players, with elite hands and stick speed."
"These guys will have NHL pedigree. If the NHL was overtime all the time, they’d still be playing in the league," Johnston added. "The creativity is really what we’re looking for.”
Games will be aired on CBS Sports in the United States and TSN in Canada. They will consist of eight-minute halves and have a running clock. There will be no penalties in the league, only penalty shots.
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When 31 general managers log on, in June or in the fall, to the NHL's first virtual draft, expect the proceedings to evoke the spirit of the Sidney Crosby sweepstakes - the last player bonanza the league held under such weird circumstances.
The upcoming draft shares a certain symmetry with the 2005 edition, and not only because touted top prospect Alexis Lafreniere - like Crosby - hails from the QMJHL's Rimouski Oceanic. Anomalous events will have forced the league to reschedule and relocate both drafts: to the Westin Hotel in downtown Ottawa, in the case of Crosby's entry to the league, and, presumably, to executives' home offices across the U.S. and Canada in this moment of physical distancing.
GMs in recent weeks have expressed objection to staging this draft in June, considering the 2019-20 season might yet resume in some form afterward. The typical selection process has been upended, sort of like it was when the overdue conclusion of a 10-month lockout forced the league to move the show on short notice to a muted conference room.
It was a peculiar setting for a transformative weekend in league history: July 30-31, 2005, when the Penguins capitalized on their luck in a free-for-all lottery by picking the superstar who's since led them to three Stanley Cups - and when several other storylines that would change the NHL were spoken into existence.
Ahead of the 2020 draft's particular unorthodoxy, let's relive some of those subplots from '05: the legendary batch of goalies selected, the crestfallen teams that shortly thereafter won the Cup anyway, the negation of a possible Crosby-Alex Ovechkin partnership, and more.
With no 2004-05 standings from which to set a draft order, the NHL modified its rules for the 2005 lottery to give every team a weighted shot at the first overall pick - and the 17-year-old center who'd spent the span of the lockout racking up 168 points in the QMJHL.
The league conferred the best odds - three lottery balls in the draw - to the four teams that hadn't reached the last three postseasons or won any of the past four lotteries: Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Columbus, and the Rangers. (The Blue Jackets and Penguins drafted No. 1 in 2002 and 2003, respectively, but only after Florida earned and traded both picks.) Ten teams received two balls each for making one of those postseasons or winning one of those lotteries. The remainder of the league's clubs got a single ball apiece.
That distribution left Pittsburgh with a mere 6.25% (1-in-16) chance to earn the top selection, scarcely exceeding most other teams' odds of 2.08% (1-in-48) and undermining the belief of cynics and conspiracy theorists that the NHL rigged the lottery to save the Penguins from bankruptcy. Fortune smiled on Pittsburgh that July, while the Blue Jackets landed at sixth overall and the Sabres and Rangers fell out of the top 10.
It was a stroke of luck that revived the Penguins and guaranteed the franchise would evolve into a perennial contender. But history might have unfolded differently if not for a previous setback.
The last time NHL hockey had been played, in 2003-04, the Penguins' 58 points constituted the worst regular-season total in the league. Yet despite a lottery format stacked heavily in favor of the last-place club, Pittsburgh lost the ensuing draw to the Capitals, who also jumped Chicago for the right to draft Ovechkin and, as a result, received only one ball in the Crosby raffle.
What twilight-zone scenario might have ensued had the Penguins won the 2004 lottery and selected Ovechkin, thereby enabling the Blackhawks to take Evgeni Malkin at No. 2 and leaving Washington without a foundational star? The Capitals, Sabres, Blue Jackets, and Rangers would have all seen their odds to land Crosby improve slightly, but imagine this: Maybe Pittsburgh's remaining two balls would have been sufficient to win again, empowering the Penguins to deploy Ovechkin on Crosby's wing for the duration of their careers.
How's this for an only-in-2005 moment - an oddity befitting a unique draft. Two teams finished below .500 in '03-04 and received top-three picks that, achingly, didn't net them the generational talent available. Those clubs then combined to win the next two Stanley Cups, beating Pittsburgh to the prize even as Crosby became the NHL's first teenaged Art Ross Trophy winner.
Carolina and Anaheim lifted the Cup in 2006 and 2007, respectively, but each did so without its top '05 draftee on the roster. The Hurricanes dealt defenseman Jack Johnson, the No. 3 pick, to the Kings following their championship season - before Johnson left the University of Michigan to turn pro. Bobby Ryan, the Ducks' selection at No. 2, made his NHL debut in 2007-08 as GM Brian Burke's club set about defending its title.
Of all people, Darren Helm - a fifth-round pick at No. 132 - was the first player from the 2005 draft class to lift the Stanley Cup; he centered the Red Wings' fourth line during their triumphant postseason run in 2008. (Two other Detroit draftees from 2005, second-rounder Justin Abdelkader and fourth-rounder Mattias Ritola, each played a pair of games that season but didn't feature in the playoffs.)
That statement is true in recent memory at minimum. The 2005 draft produced four current NHL starters - Carey Price (No. 5 overall), Tuukka Rask (No. 21), Jonathan Quick (No. 72) and Ben Bishop (No. 85) - but a simple list of names woefully undersells the merit of their collective efforts this past decade:
Two of those goalies - Price and Rask - have each won a Vezina Trophy; Bishop has been a finalist on three occasions, and Quick twice.
Quick won the Conn Smythe Trophy and the Stanley Cup in 2012 and backstopped Los Angeles to another championship in 2014.
Rask helped the Bruins reach the final in 2013 and 2019; Bishop did the same with the Lightning in 2015.
Price's astounding .972 save percentage - he allowed three goals in five games - led Canada to gold at Sochi in 2014 during the last best-on-best Olympic tournament.
Bishop, Price, and Rask each boast one NHL season with a save percentage greater than .930, marks that land in the top 25 all time.
Rask led the NHL in Goals Saved Above Average when the league halted the 2019-20 season. Bishop, now playing in Dallas, ranked fifth; he was tops in that category last season.
The crop of goalies drafted in 2012 is comparable in quality and depth. Andrei Vasilevskiy (No. 19 overall) was the 2018-19 Vezina recipient; Connor Hellebuyck (No. 130) is favored to win this season; Matt Murray (No. 83) is a two-time Stanley Cup champion; Frederik Andersen (No. 87) can generally be counted upon across 60-plus starts per year. But the netminding alumni of Ottawa's Westin draft in 2005 have set a formidably high standard.
Crosby, Anze Kopitar (the No. 11 pick in 2005), and Paul Stastny (No. 44) are first, second, and third in their draft class in career scoring, a telltale measure of sustained excellence. Keith Yandle would have surely been selected far earlier than 105th overall if any front office figured he'd rise to fourth on that leaderboard.
| 2005 draft | Pos. | Player | GP | G | A | PTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. 1 | C | Sidney Crosby | 984 | 462 | 801 | 1263 |
| No. 11 | C | Anze Kopitar | 1073 | 333 | 617 | 950 |
| No. 44 | C | Paul Stastny | 945 | 250 | 476 | 726 |
| No. 105 | D | Keith Yandle | 976 | 99 | 474 | 573 |
| No. 24 | RW | T.J. Oshie | 803 | 238 | 329 | 567 |
| No. 2 | RW | Bobby Ryan | 833 | 254 | 301 | 555 |
| No. 33 | LW | James Neal | 821 | 289 | 256 | 545 |
| No. 62 | D | Kris Letang | 808 | 127 | 410 | 537 |
| No. 230 | RW | Patric Hornqvist | 770 | 238 | 242 | 480 |
| No. 25 | C | Andrew Cogliano | 1012 | 165 | 234 | 399 |
In a sense, Yandle, the slick, durable Panthers defenseman who hasn't missed a game in 11 years, is characteristic of the 2005 draft as a whole. Players taken all over the board have distinguished themselves in unexpected ways. The class of 2005 includes:
Another renowned hockey ironman in Cogliano, the No. 25 overall pick who appeared in 830 consecutive regular-season games from 2007-18. That's the seventh-longest run in NHL history; Yandle is fourth at 866 games and counting, with two spots between him and Doug Jarvis' decades-old benchmark of 964.
A Stanley Cup hero selected last overall. Hornqvist, the 230th pick, scored the title-winning goal when Pittsburgh knocked off Nashville - the team that drafted him - in 2017.
The NHL's all-time shortest skater in 5-foot-4 Nathan Gerbe. The No. 142 pick stands one inch taller than Roy Worters, a Hall of Fame goalie from the pre-Original Six era.
Several top defensemen selected after the first round: Marc-Edouard Vlasic (No. 35), the only player from this class aside from Kopitar and Cogliano who's eclipsed 1,000 games played; Anton Stralman (No. 216), the lone seventh-rounder beyond Hornqvist still in the league; and Letang (No. 62), the six-time All-Star whom Pittsburgh drafted one pick after fellow blue-liner Michael Gergen, a future ECHLer who last played in 2012.
It's worth contrasting the Penguins' headlining hauls from 2004 and 2005 - Malkin and Crosby - with those of Washington, their eternal adversary in the Metropolitan Division. One year after winning the Ovechkin lottery, the Capitals were awarded the No. 14 pick and selected hulking defenseman Sasha Pokulok. He never made the NHL and has played in Quebec's Ligue Nord-Americaine de Hockey since 2012.
Pokulok, to his credit, tore up the LNAH with 60 points in 36 games this season; the French-language Journal de Montreal recently called him the semi-pro circuit's answer to Bobby Orr. It's fair to wonder how his inability to develop as the Capitals once envisioned - a shortfall attributable in part to concussions - hindered the club's championship trajectory. Might Ovechkin have come closer to breaking through before 2018 with the help of another impact teammate?
At least Washington emerged from the lockout with Ovi. At third overall in 2004 and seventh overall in 2005, Chicago selected Cam Barker and Jack Skille, respectively, two players whose journeyman NHL careers rate as disappointments against the expectations of their draft positions. Only the arrivals of Jonathan Toews (No. 3 in 2006) and Patrick Kane (No. 1 in 2007) turned the Blackhawks around, showing - as Pittsburgh did with Crosby - that if a team is bad enough for long enough, it might eventually stumble into a draft worth remembering.
Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.
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Brian Burke approves of the proposal to expand the playoffs for just this season, but he's concerned about the risks associated with a return involving 24 clubs.
"Well, this year I say yes," the former longtime NHL executive said Thursday on Sportsnet's "Tim & Sid" when asked how he'd respond if someone pitched him on the reported 24-team plan. "Okay, if you look at the alternatives, the ideal thing is you finish the regular season. Then you know the proper order of finish, you've got the order of selection in the draft, all of those ... picks are sorted out. Okay, but we can't do that. We're not going to be able to finish the season, so what's the next best thing? This year (it's) to expand the playoffs.
"Now, I've been cynical and skeptical about our ability to play," Burke continued. "I remain that way. I think this is too many teams. I think it's going to almost guarantee that we have an issue with this virus, but if they can pull this off, fantastic - this year only. My prediction is this is going to open the door for expanded playoffs going forward, which I'm vehemently opposed to."
Burke commended the league and the players' union for coming up with the 24-team format under these circumstances and said he hopes it happens, but he has doubts about the ability to adequately test for COVID-19 upon a potential resumption of the season.
"(In terms of) the testing that we're doing right now, there's not enough of it and it's not accurate enough," he said, adding, "You're going to have to test these players every day. There's going to be a regular roster of players, plus black aces, plus trainers, plus coaches, plus management people. It's 50 (people) per team without families. That's 50 tests per team per day (and) 24 teams. It's a big undertaking and I hope they can pull it off."
The NHLPA's executive board began voting on the 24-team proposal Thursday night, as first reported by Sportsnet's Chris Johnston. The results aren't expected until Friday.
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