Hockey Hall of Famer Jim Devellano, as an executive, has collected five Stanley Cup championship rings. The NHL postseason is his specialty.
Two days after the NHL’s 82-game regular season concluded, the “second season” jump-started on Saturday in two cities. With the last possible day of the chase for the Stanley Cup being June 23, reaching the finals is an uphill battle for teams.
Like so many millions of NHL fans, Devellano, the 82-year-old “kid” from Toronto—now in his 57th year of paid employment for three organizations, first, as a scout, and later, as assistant general manager and director of scouting with the New York Islanders, before joining the Detroit Red Wings 43 years ago—has his hockey emotions on high alert.
Today, serving as the Red Wings’ senior vice-president, Dellevano will be following the full playoff schedule. Saturday, with the Colorado Avalanche in Dallas taking on the Stars, and the St. Louis Blues flying to Winnipeg, Canada, opposing a Jets team that tallied 116 points this past season, Devellano will be watching games and taking notes from his living room in Southwest Florida.
Once the opening round of playoff action gets underway on April 22 in Tampa between the Lightning and defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers, Dellevano, who spent ten seasons with the Islanders before moving on to Detroit in 1982 as the team’s general manager, will make the 60-mile drive north on I-75 to Tampa.
Playoff hockey is what Devellano knows better than most. One of, if not his most special Stanley Cup season to recall, came at the conclusion of the Islanders’ third season in April 1975.
“We (Islanders) were a major, major underdog going into that opening series,” Devellano told The Epoch Times during a recent phone conversation. “It’s amazing how it turned out. The first game was at Madison Square Garden, in a best of two out of three . Were we just lucky? Who knows but we won the first game. Game 2, we go back to the Nassau Coliseum. The Rangers came in on our ice and spanked us—8–3. It’s one game a piece, and we go back to the Garden. The Islanders are up 3–0 going into the third period. Then, the Rangers tied it up. We go to overtime. 11 seconds into OT, J.P. Parise scores. We won the series.”
Devellano firmly believes that preliminary round playoff series victory is what put the Islanders on the NHL map as anything but pushovers any longer. By the spring of 1980, the Islanders were the powerhouse of the NHL, collecting four consecutive Stanley Cup championship rings.
No team since the Islanders won the championship from 1980–1983 have any team earned more than back-to-back Cups. The last to take top honors in the Stanley Cup Finals two seasons consecutively was Tampa Bay in 2021 and 2022.
The top three teams in each division will make up the first 12 teams in the opening playoffs round. Oddly, the U.S.-based Original Six teams—Detroit Red Wings, Boston Bruins, New York Rangers, and Chicago Blackhawks—for the first time ever, didn’t qualify for the playoffs.
With all the moving parts that is the Stanley Cup playoffs, Devellano understands better than most in part due to his half century-plus in the NHL, just how important the coaches are, particularly in a short series.
“The Islanders’ first year was a disaster. The second year, we brought in Al Arbour. By the third year, our team got much better. From then on, the Islanders never missed being in the playoffs. Twelve straight years Al took the team beyond the regular season,” he said.
With the Panthers being the reigning Stanley Cup champions, and the previous season (2022–2023) being runner-up to the Cup-winning Vegas Golden Knights, they were third best in the Atlantic Division this past season with 98 points—10 behind the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Montreal Canadiens will open up their preliminary series on Monday in Washington, D.C., with Alex Ovechkin leading the Capitals. Washington, just completing their 50th anniversary on ice, clinched their playoff berth nearly one month ago. Ovechkin has since become the NHL all-time leading goal scorer, by surpassing Wayne Gretzky with 897 goals. The Canadiens, who as an organization have won 24 Stanley Cup titles, last won a Finals series 32 years ago.
The Winnipeg Jets, winners of the 2024–2025 Presidents’ Trophy as the team finishing with the most points and who entered the NHL after being absorbed in the 1979–1980 season from the World Hockey Association, have yet to win a Stanley Cup. The high-flying offense that is the Toronto Maple Leafs will skate opposite the Ottawa Senators, in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference opening round on Sunday in Toronto. The Leafs have been looking to capture their first Stanley Cup championship since 1967.
Through the four rounds of playoff hockey that will take two teams into the Stanley Cup Finals, Devellano will have eyes on the players, what’s happening on the benches, and the plays that will live long on into NHL history. This is his busy season, and Devellano wouldn’t have it any other way.
