2004 Stanley Cup Final

Paths to the 2004 Stanley Cup Finals

Tampa Bay finished the regular season with 106 points and entered the playoffs as the Eastern Conference's top seed. They defeated the New York Islanders 4–1, the Montreal Canadiens 4–0, and the Philadelphia Flyers 4–3 to reach the Finals for the first time since their establishment in 1992. Calgary finished with 94 points, qualifying for the playoffs for the first time since 1996. As the sixth seed, they eliminated the Vancouver Canucks 4–3, the Detroit Red Wings 4–2, and the San Jose Sharks 4–2, making their first Finals appearance since 1989 and marking the first time a Canadian team reached the Finals since 1994.

Game summaries

Game 1, at St. Pete Times Forum, ended with Calgary winning 4–1. Martin Gelinas scored early, and Jarome Iginla and Stephane Yelle added goals in the second period; Chris Simon scored the fourth goal after Martin St. Louis scored for Tampa Bay. Game 2 saw Tampa Bay win 4–1 to tie the series. Ruslan Fedotenko opened the scoring, and third-period goals by Brad Richards, Dan Boyle, and St. Louis sealed the win.

A scrum occurred after Andre Roy accidentally knocked over Miikka Kiprusoff; Chris Simon fought Roy, and Chris Dingman was ejected. Martin Gelinas was ejected for a check from behind on Pavel Kubina. In Game 3 at the Pengrowth Saddledome, Calgary shut out Tampa Bay 3–0, with goals by Simon, Shean Donovan, and Iginla. Game 4 was a 1–0 Lightning victory, with Nikolai Khabibulin recording his fifth postseason shutout; Brad Richards scored the lone goal on a two-man advantage three minutes into the game.

Stanley Cup engraving

The 2004 Stanley Cup was presented to Lightning captain Dave Andreychuk by NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman after Tampa Bay's 2–1 win in game seven. The following players were engraved: Eric Perrin (4 regular season games, 12 playoff games), Darren Rumble (5 regular season games, no playoff games), and Stanislav Neckar (2 games in the Eastern Conference finals). Tampa Bay successfully requested an exemption to engrave Neckar, who had been on Nashville's injured reserve before a trade.

Ruslan Fedotenko became the first player born and raised in Ukraine, and exclusively trained there, to win the Stanley Cup. All 52 members were engraved with full first and last names on the presentation Cup, filling the last spot. On the replica Cup, engraver Louise St. Jacques used first initials and full last names due to less space. Shane Willis and Brian Eklund were on the roster but left off the engraving and team picture.

Broadcasting

In the United States, this was the last Stanley Cup Final on ABC and the ESPN family of networks until 2022. ESPN televised the first two games; ABC broadcast the rest. Due to the 2004–05 lockout, this ended ESPN's third run and ABC's second run as main NHL broadcasters; NBC and OLN acquired the rights for the following season. OLN later became Versus, then NBCSN. This was also the last time a Canadian team played on ABC until 2024. In Canada, CBC's game seven broadcast drew 4.862 million viewers including pre-game and post-game coverage; the game itself drew 5.560 million viewers.