Starting in 1982, the championship round of the NHL's playoffs has been a best-of-seven series played between the champions of the Eastern and Western Conferences.
The Stanley Cup was first awarded to the Montreal Hockey Club in 1893 when the team won the 1893 AHAC season.
The team then had to defend its champion-title both through league championships and challenge games organised by the Stanley Cup trustees.
PCHA president Lester Patrick, had not filed a challenge, because he had expected Emmett Quinn of the NHA to make all of the arrangements in his role as hockey commissioner, whereas the trustees thought they were being purposely ignored.
[7] Any tension was diffused as Toronto successfully defended the Cup by sweeping a best-of-five series in three games.
In March 1914, trustee William Foran wrote to NHA president Emmett Quinn that the trustees are "perfectly satisfied to allow the representatives of the three pro leagues (NHA, PCHA and Maritime) to make all arrangements each season as to the series of matches to be played for the Cup.
Part of their 1913 agreement to set up drafting and player rights ownership, the NHA and PCHA agreed to have their respective champions face each other for the Cup.
[11] In 1919, the Spanish influenza epidemic forced the Montreal Canadiens and the Seattle Metropolitans to cancel their series tied at 2–2–1, marking the first time the Stanley Cup was not awarded.
[14] The format for the Stanley Cup championship changed in 1922, with the creation of the Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL).
[15] In 1924, the PCHA and the WCHL merged to form the Western Hockey League (WHL) and the championship reverted to a single series.
Other leagues and clubs have issued challenges, but from that year forward, no non-NHL team has played for it, leading it to become the de facto championship trophy of the NHL.
[18][19] A 2006 Ontario Superior Court case found that the trustees had gone against Lord Stanley's conditions in the 1947 agreement.
English-language coverage was aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), with Danny Gallivan calling the play-by-play, Keith Dancy providing the colour commentary, and Wes McKnight hosted.
However, national coverage on American television, like the rest of the NHL season, remained in a state of flux for decades.
In 1995, Fox signed on to be the exclusive national broadcast network of selected games of the final round, splitting it with ESPN.
This splitting of exclusive national coverage between a cable and a broadcast network was then passed to ABC and ESPN in 2000, and then NBC and Versus (now NBCSN) in 2006.
In 2021, the league temporarily realigned due the COVID-19 pandemic, as a result the four playoff division champions were re-seeded and played in the Semifinals, with the winners of those series advancing to the finals.