The 1989 Stanley Cup at the Calgary Saddledome
Calgary's only Stanley Cup didn't happen at the Saddledome. It happened on a Thursday night at the Montreal Forum, May 25, 1989, when Lanny McDonald scored his last NHL goal. The Cup came home to the Saddledome that summer, and the city has been telling that story ever since.
The setup
The 1988 to 1989 Calgary Flames were the best regular-season team in franchise history. They finished with 117 points, the President's Trophy, and a roster that read like a Hockey Hall of Fame waiting list. Joe Mullen, Hakan Loob, Joe Nieuwendyk, Doug Gilmour, Al MacInnis, Gary Suter, Jamie Macoun, Tim Hunter, Jim Peplinski, Theoren Fleury (a rookie), and a 36-year-old captain named Lanny McDonald who had told the team this would be his last season.
Mike Vernon was in goal. Terry Crisp was coaching. Cliff Fletcher had built the team over a decade of patient drafting and shrewd trades. The 1986 Flames had reached the Final and lost to Montreal in five games. Three years later, the same general construction was back, deeper, hungrier, and a little older.
The path to the Final
The Flames opened the 1989 playoffs against Vancouver. The series went seven games. Joel Otto scored the overtime winner in Game 7, off a skate redirect that Canucks fans still complain about. Calgary then beat the Los Angeles Kings (with a young Wayne Gretzky in his first L.A. season) in five, then dispatched the Chicago Blackhawks in five, and entered a rematch with Montreal for the Cup.
The Final opened at the Saddledome on May 14, 1989. Calgary won Game 1 in overtime on a Theoren Fleury goal. They won Game 2. Then Montreal took Game 3 at the Forum. Game 4 went to overtime, Ryan Walter for Montreal. Game 5 was at the Saddledome and Calgary won 3 to 2. The Flames had a chance to win the Cup on the road in Game 6.
Game 6, Montreal Forum, May 25, 1989
The story of how the 1989 Cup actually got won has been told a thousand times in Calgary, and the small details vary by who's telling it. The version that holds up across most accounts: Doug Gilmour scored twice. Mullen scored. And Lanny McDonald, who hadn't even been in the lineup for several recent games, scored the goal that broke a 2 to 2 tie in the second period.
Lanny had been a healthy scratch for parts of the playoff run. Crisp put him in for Game 6. The goal came at 4:24 of the second, on a feed from Joe Nieuwendyk and Jim Peplinski. Lanny shot from the slot. Patrick Roy never saw it. The Forum got quiet in the strange way the Forum got quiet when something significant happened to Montreal at home.
The final was Calgary 4, Montreal 2. McDonald did not score again in the NHL. The goal that won the Stanley Cup was the last goal of his career.
Calgary became the first visiting team to win the Cup at the Forum. The Flames celebrated on Montreal ice, with Lanny lifting the Cup, his eyes already wet.
"That goal still gets played in Calgary at least three times a year, and every Calgarian over forty can name the assist guys without looking it up. Joe Nieuwendyk and Jim Peplinski. The slot. Roy frozen. The Forum quiet. The Calgary bench losing it. That moment is the city's hockey memory."
The summer of 1989 at the Saddledome
The Cup came back to Calgary on a Friday. The team flew home. The Saddledome held a celebration that night that wasn't ticketed in any conventional sense. Whoever could get in, got in. Lanny lifted the Cup on the building's ice surface. Players took it home for their day with it (the tradition was newer then; some Flames brought it to family barbecues, others to local bars).
The parade ran down 17th Avenue SW, which would be renamed the Red Mile fifteen years later during the 2004 Cup run, but in 1989 was just 17th Avenue and was already, on Cup Day, completely impassable.
What it meant for the Saddledome
The 1989 Cup is the only Stanley Cup banner in the Saddledome's rafters. The 1986 Campbell Conference Champions banner is up there too. The 2004 Western Conference Champions banner is up there. But only one of those is for a Cup. The 1989 banner has hung for thirty-seven years and will move to Scotia Place in 2027, when the Saddledome itself comes down.
Calgary has not won another Cup. The 2004 run, captained by Jarome Iginla, came one win short. The 2022 Pacific Division team lost to Edmonton in five games. Eight other Final appearances by Western Canadian franchises have come and gone since 1989. The 1989 Cup remains, for Calgary, singular.
Lanny McDonald, after
McDonald retired after the 1989 Cup. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1992. The mustache is still legendary. He has spent the decades since as one of the league's most beloved alumni, and Calgary has stayed close to him in a way most cities don't stay close to retired athletes. He is currently chair of the Hockey Hall of Fame board.
If you ask Calgarians of a certain age what they were doing on May 25, 1989, most of them can tell you. Most of them remember exactly where they watched the goal. That kind of civic memory is what we're trying to preserve at this site, before the building where the celebration happened is gone.
The roster, for the record
- Goalies: Mike Vernon, Rick Wamsley
- Defencemen: Al MacInnis (Conn Smythe winner), Gary Suter, Jamie Macoun, Brad McCrimmon, Ric Nattress, Dana Murzyn
- Forwards: Joe Mullen, Joe Nieuwendyk, Hakan Loob, Doug Gilmour, Theoren Fleury, Joel Otto, Jim Peplinski, Lanny McDonald (captain), Tim Hunter, Colin Patterson, Jiri Hrdina, Mark Hunter, Brian MacLellan
- Coach: Terry Crisp. GM: Cliff Fletcher.
Al MacInnis won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP, but anyone who watched the series will tell you Doug Gilmour was the engine of the whole run. Both are now in the Hall of Fame.