1945 Stanley Cup Finals
| 1945 Stanley Cup Finals | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| * – Denotes overtime period(s) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Location(s) |
Detroit, MI (Olympia) (1,2,5,7) Toronto, ON (Maple Leaf Gardens) (3,4,6) |
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| Coaches | Toronto: Hap Day Detroit: Jack Adams |
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| Captains | Toronto: Bob Davidson Detroit: Sid Abel |
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| Dates | April 6 to April 22, 1945 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Series-winning goal | Babe Pratt (12:14, third) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The 1945 Stanley Cup Final was a best-of-seven series between the Detroit Red Wings and the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Maple Leafs won the series by four games to three.
Toronto beat the defending champion Montreal Canadiens in six games to advance to the Final. Detroit defeated the Boston Bruins in seven games to reach the Final.
This was the first Cup Final in NHL history where both teams started rookie goaltenders. Harry Lumley, who had become the youngest goaltender to play in the league the previous year, was in the Wings' net, while Frank McCool substituted for regular Maple Leafs netminder Turk Broda, who was in Europe with the Canadian army at the time.
In the first three games, which were low-scoring goaltenders' duels, McCool did not allow the Wings a single goal, the first time one team shut out the other for the first three games in Stanley Cup Finals history. In addition, Toronto now stood one win away from sweeping Detroit, as the Red Wings' Mud Bruneteau noted after game three. The last time the two teams had met in the Finals, in 1942, Toronto had beaten Detroit—after going down three games to none, becoming the first professional sports team in North America to win a playoff round in such a fashion.
In game four, the Maple Leafs had a chance to win the Cup on Maple Leaf Gardens ice, but the Red Wings got on the board for the first time in the series when Flash Hollett opened the scoring 8:35 into the game, ending McCool's shutout streak at 193:09 (dating back to the semifinals against Montreal). Four other Detroit players, including rookie Ted Lindsay (who scored what transpired to be the game-winner at 3:20 of the third period), scored to overcome Ted Kennedy's hat trick.
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