Year of the Long Shot?

Everyone loves the underdog. The upset special. The little guy who goes all the way.

But in the modern NHL, it almost never happens.

The Stanley Cup Playoffs produce plenty of upsets. It seems like every year a team emerges from the bottom of the pool to knock off a couple of favorites.

But they always fall short of the ultimate goal.

Since 1996, every Stanley Cup champion has finished among the top five in the regular-season standings.

A few winners might have been unexpected, like the 2004 Lightning and 2006 Hurricanes. Neither team had a winning history, and neither has won much since.

But Tampa Bay had the NHL's 2nd-best record in 2003-04, and the Hurricanes finished 4th overall in their Stanley Cup year. They weren't outliers.

The last true underdogs to win the Cup were the 1995 New Jersey Devils, who finished 9th overall that year. That comes with an asterisk, because 1994-95 was an aberration in every way: a labor dispute shortened the regular season to 48 games.

The 1993 Montreal Canadiens are remembered as an unlikely champion. But they had 102 points that season, good for 6th place in a 24-team league. So it's not like they came out of nowhere.

Could 2009 be the year that bucks the trend, producing a genuine long shot as champion? In the next post, we'll look at the top six teams in the NHL this season, and why each of them looks vulnerable heading into the playoffs.

Photo: Bob Carpenter and the Devils were not among the favorites in 1995 (Robert Laberge/Allsport/Getty Images)