Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
I honestly thought that they would beat the Stars. The Flames just felt like a team of destiny at that point even though there was no way that the Flames were going to beat the Islanders.
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It is a reasonable conclusion to think that the Islanders would have defeated our 1980-81 Flames in the Stanley Cup Final, but I do think we would have put up a good fight.
We played the Islanders (and each of the other 19 teams) 4 times that year, twice in Calgary and twice on the road:
December 13, 1980 - NYI 4 @ Calgary 4
December 23, 1980 - Calgary 2 @ NYI 2
January 20, 1981 - Calgary 0 @ NYI 5
February 25, 1981 - NYI 4 @ Calgary 11
I think we had team that matched up better with the Islanders than Minnesota did, who fell in 5 games in the Final. We had size and toughness, we were tough at home (only 5 losses in the regular season in the Corral that first year) and we showed we could win a big game on the road with a game 7 victory at the Philadelphia Spectrum in round 2.