The Montreal Canadiens won their league-leading 24th Cup by defeating the Los Angeles Kings four games to one.
[4] This season saw two new clubs join the league: the Ottawa Senators and the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The Senators were the second Ottawa-based NHL franchise (see Ottawa Senators (original)) and brought professional hockey back to Canada's capital, while the Tampa Bay franchise (headed by Hockey Hall of Fame brothers Phil and Tony Esposito) strengthened the NHL's presence in the American Sun Belt, which had first started with the birth of the Los Angeles Kings in 1967.
This was the final season of the Wales and Campbell Conferences, and the Adams, Patrick, Norris, and Smythe divisions.
The NHL and Bruce McNall's Multivision Marketing and Public Relations Co. organized the additional 24 regular season games in 15 cities that did not have a franchise, providing as a litmus test for future expansion.
This marked the first time since the President's Trophy had been introduced that the previous season's top team missed the next year's playoffs.
This was the fifth season of the league's Canadian national broadcast rights deals with TSN and Hockey Night in Canada on CBC.
Coverage of the Stanley Cup playoffs was primarily on CBC, with TSN airing first round all-U.S. series.
Thus the network accused the NHL of violating a nonbinding clause, arguing that it had been deprived of its contractual right of first refusal for the 1992–93 season.
Appellate Division of New York State Supreme Court justice Shirley Fingerwood would deny SportsChannel America's request for an injunction against the NHL.
[16] ESPN's deal did not include the All-Star Game; NBC instead televised it for the fourth consecutive season.
Through a brokered deal, sister broadcast network ABC televised five weekly playoff telecasts on Sunday afternoons starting on April 18 and ending on May 16.
[17][18][19][20][21][22] This marked the first time that playoff National Hockey League games were broadcast on American network television[23] since 1975.