How long must a team suffer? How long has a team suffered? This is the third of several posts looking into the playoff droughts of 30 of the 32 active NHL franchises to figure out what went wrong and how it ended. This post covers Dallas, Detroit, Edmonton, Florida, and Los Angeles.
A quarter of a century later, the 1995 tournament is remembered not only for Canada’s “Dream Team”, but also for how it brought major international hockey to across Alberta.
The tournament
A repeat after winning gold in 1993 may have seemed unlikely at the time considering Canada had only won back-to-back world junior titles just once in the tournament s history.
The odds seemed to be stacked against this group, too. Canada had five eligible returnees unavailable for the tournament because the NHL came calling: Paul Kariya, Chris Pronger, Chris Gratton, Alexandre Daigle, and Rob Niedermayer. This tournament was a true test of the nation s depth.
Canada got off to a decent start, neutralizing Switzerland with a 5-1 victory to open the tournament before taking down Germany 5-2. Wider margins of victory were ideal against lesser opponents considering goal differential was used as the tiebreaker in this tournament - it s how Canada previously won in 1985 despite sharing an identical 5-0-2 record with Czechoslovakia.