Playoff Series Where The Winner Was Clearly Outplayed?

[DitchMarner]

I don't mean ones where the team that lost played a little better but ran into a hot goalie or something.

I'm talking about series where it seemed the winner had no business coming out on top.


It's been a while, but I recall the Capitals carrying the play in their series against the Penguins in 2017. They somehow went down 3-1 despite looking downright dominant at times and then couldn't finish the comeback, losing in seven games. They did get their revenge the following year, eliminating the Pens in six games and ending their two-year Cup streak (PIT hasn't won a series since).

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[tabness]

as a Wings fan, where do you wanna begin? lol

many losing series from the glory years actually saw the Wings outplay the other team (I'd even include Colorado 1996 and 1999 there) but vastly outplayed two come to mind:

• 1994 against San Jose because I feel like Scotty was trying to get Bryan Murray fired to become the GM/Director of Player Personnel and so didn't really even coach
• 2003 against Ducks cause of Jiggy's big pads

 

[The Panther]

I think it's fairly common in a series where one team is clearly better at even strength and in most situations, but also where the other team is awesome on the PP and thus wins the series. That seems to happen fairly often. Like, if you look at the clubs' respective plus/minus results, the losing team will be, like, +25 and the winning team maybe -25, but the difference is that the losing team scored 10 PP goals or whatever.

But it's rarer to think of a series where one club is clearly better overall and loses. Two come to mind, however:

1993 Los Angeles - Toronto
I'm pretty sure the Leafs were the better team in this series. Toronto kind of let up a bit in game two and the Kings showed some surprising grit for that one, but after that L.A. got kind of lucky in game six and then Toronto got 'Gretzky-ed' in game seven. But I think Toronto was the better team by a reasonable margin.

2021 Edmonton - Winnipeg
This might be a controversial choice because Winnipeg swept the series. But honestly, my memory of this one is that Edmonton was clearly the better team in at least three of the four games (certainly games 2, 3, 4), and possibly in all four. But a couple of costly mistakes by Oilers' players at key moments led to Edmonton losing three games in a row in overtime.

 

[McGarnagle]

Aside from the game 2 drubbing, the 2013 ECF was the most disproportionate sweep I've ever seen. The Penguins were scary as hell on every possession and dominating in game 1 but Rask managed to hold the door while Krejci snuck a few past Vokoun. Games 3 and 4 were tight and decided by a triple OT and goal in one and a late third period goal in the other.

 

[Mike C]

Forgive my dalliance into a different sport but every time I see a topic like this I immediately think to the 1960 baseball World Series. The Mazeroski one!

 

[MadArcand]

Canes - Panthers 2023. Basically goalied to death just like Giguere did to the Wings.

 

[JianYang]

By outplayed, do you mean significantly outchanced?

When the 2010 Habs took out the top two favourites of the east in Washington and Pittsburgh, I don't have the numbers infront of me, but I would imagine the Habs were significantly outchanced, and in the case against Pittsburgh, they won rhe series with their #1 dman essentially missing the whole series.