Playing in their second Stanley Cup final in team history, the Vancouver Canucks fall to the New York Rangers 3-2 in Game 7 at Madison Square Garden.
The Canucks had bounced back from a 3-1 series deficit, forcing a seventh game in the championship final for just the second time in 23 years. Only the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs had ever came back from so deep in the hole, but the outstanding play of goalie Kirk McLean, star winger Pavel Bure and team captain Trevor Linder nonetheless had the underdog Canucks at even odds entering the do-or-die final.
The Rangers opened scoring for the first time since Game 2 after Sergei Zubov froze McLean before making a cross-ice feed to an open Brian Leetch, who had no trouble throwing the puck top shelf. Zubov assisted on the game’s second goal as well, by Adam Graves' with Canucks defenceman Jyrki Lumme in the penalty box, at 14:45 into the first period.
Linden cut the lead in half with a breakaway goal at 5:21 of the second period, but Rangers captain Mark Messier capitalized on yet another power play to make it 3-1 at the 13:29 mark by after scoring on McLean five-hole.
With the Canucks on the power play, forward Cliff Ronning passed to Bure cross ice, who in turn fed Linden down low for a one-timer past Richter to silence the crowd at 4:50 into the third.
The Rangers nonetheless managed to hang on to win their first Stanley Cup in 54 years, and former Edmonton Oiler Messier became the first and only player in NHL history to hoist Lord Stanley’s mug as captain of two separate teams.
(His stint as captain of a third team didn't turn out nearly as well.)
Back home in Vancouver, a post-game downtown street party attended by thousands of fans turned into a riot. As many as 500 police officers, many equipped with riot gear and using large doses of tear gas, battled civilians near the intersection of Robson and Thurlow, and roughly 200 people were injured, including a 19-year-old man police say was a ringleader and who was shot in the head with a rubber bullet, leaving permanent brain damage. More than 50 people were arrested during the melee, and the final bill for damages was around $1 million.
