One of my favorite streaks in all of sports was in serious danger this weekend, but just barely survived: The Chicago Bears have still never had a 4,000-yard passer.
(Yes, I know you think you clicked on an NHL article. Don’t worry, you did. We’re just going to use the NFL as a jumping-off point. Give me a few paragraphs and we’ll get to the hockey, I promise.)
The thing about passing for 4,000 yards in an NFL season is that while it’s certainly not easy, it’s also not especially rare. Six players did it this year. Same with the year before. Ten did it the year before that, which was one off the record for the most in a single season. All told, it’s a mark that’s been reached 238 times in league history.
Just never by a Chicago Bear. And that’s weird, because the Bears are one of the league’s oldest teams. But for a variety of reasons, ranging from injury to identity to (most often) ineptitude, they never seem to have a quarterback who can get to 4,000 yards. Even when they shuffled their way to a Super Bowl in 1985, they didn’t come close. This year, recent No. 1 pick Caleb Williams went into the season’s final game needing 270 yards to finally end the drought; he wound up with 212, good enough to break the franchise single-season record, but not to get to 4,000.
I love “never” stats like that — the ones that feel like they shouldn’t be possible over a long enough timeline, but somehow are. So today, let’s look back at 11 common stats and milestones that specific NHL teams have never hit, or in a few cases, at least have an impossible-seeming drought hanging over them.
The Devils have never had a 100-point or 50-goal season
We might as well start here, since it’s pretty much the closest equivalent to the Bears passing yards stat. Despite their franchise history dating back to the mid-70s (via Kansas City and Colorado), which includes essentially all of the highest-scoring era in league history, the New Jersey Devils have never had a player hit either of the game’s most basic offensive milestones.
The team record for goals in a season is Brian Gionta’s 48 from 2005-06, which broke the mark held by Pat Verbeek and his 46 goals in 1987-88. They’ve had 11 seasons of 40 or more goals, most recently Jack Hughes getting 43 in 2022-23. That was the same season that Hughes set the franchise record with 99 points, one of just five times the Devils have ever had somebody get to the 90s.
Since the franchise entered the league in 1974-75, there have been 192 individual seasons in which a player has scored 50 goals, and 299 in which a player has hit the 100-point mark. Just not any Devils (or Rockies or Scouts).
And sure, you could point to teams such as the Columbus Blue Jackets and Nashville Predators that have also never hit either mark. But those teams have two fewer decades of history to draw on, and they arrived after the Dead Puck era was already in full swing. And neither of those teams has managed to win three Stanley Cups. Apparently, defense really does win championships.
Odds it ends soon: You’d figure Hughes would have a shot if he could stay healthy all year. But nobody on the team is on pace to even come close this season.
Despite winning two Stanley Cup titles, the Kings have never posted 50 regular-season wins. (Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
The Kings have never won 50 games in a season
This mark used to be hard to get to, back in the days before shootouts and loser points. These days, it’s relatively common — five teams hit the 50-win mark last year, down from seven in each of the two seasons before that and nine in 2021-22.
In all, it’s been done by 111 teams since the 1970-71 Bruins became the first. That list includes the 2016-17 Blue Jackets, the 2021-22 Minnesota Wild and even the 2009-10 Arizona Coyotes. The Vegas Golden Knights have hit the mark three times in less than a decade of existence. The Buffalo Sabres did it in back-to-back years, in 2005-06 and 2006-07. The Toronto Maple Leafs have done it in three of the last four.
But despite winning two Stanley Cups, the Kings have never hit the mark in their nearly six decades. Not even during the Wayne Gretzky era, when they peaked with 46. The team record is 48 wins, set in 2015-16 and equaled last year. Yes, last season — the one that earned Rob Blake a pink slip — was tied for the most successful in franchise history, in terms of regular-season wins.
Odds it ends soon: They’d need a monster second half to get close this year, and they don’t exactly seem to be trending up. But in a league where ties are a thing of the past, you’d think this one would have to fall eventually.
The Maple Leafs have never had a Norris winner
The Norris dates back to 1953, and as you’d expect for an award that old, the Original Six is well-represented on the winner list. The Boston Bruins and Detroit Red Wings have had three different winners each, the Chicago Blackhawks and New York Rangers have had four and the Montreal Canadiens have had six. The Leafs? Nada.
They’ve had a few finalists — 11 in all, including two in the same season back in 1962-63 when Carl Brewer finished second and Tim Horton was third. Allan Stanley and Borje Salming came close, too. But no Leaf has ever won the award.
Odds it ends soon: Given that the current blue line is an underachieving Morgan Rielly and then a bunch of lumbering senior citizens, we can probably lock this one in for a few more years at least.
The Wild have never had a Hall of Famer
Not one, in their 25 years and counting as an NHL franchise that has employed 334 different players.
I don’t mean that they’ve never developed one, or that nobody who was primarily remembered as a Wild star has gone into the Hall. I mean that nobody in the Hockey Hall of Fame has ever played a single game for the Minnesota Wild. You could watch every moment of every game played by every player in the Hall, and you’d never see one take a single shift in a Wild jersey.
There’s a great page on the Hockey Hall of Fame site that lists every team that any HHOFer has ever played for. Open up the “M” list, and you’ll find clubs such as the Markham Waxers, the Melville Millionaires and the Muskegon Lumberjacks. But while you can find the Minnesota Fighting Saints, North Stars and Whitecaps, there’s no mention of the Wild.
The Panthers squeezed a few end-of-career seasons out of guys such as Dino Ciccarelli and Igor Larionov. The Predators had appearances by Paul Kariya and Peter Forsberg. The Blue Jackets got a few years from Sergei Fedorov. Even the lowly Atlanta Thrashers had that weird week of Chris Chelios. But not the Wild.
Odds it ends soon: Pretty much 100 percent, because Marc-Andre Fleury will get in soon, assuming he can stop teasing comebacks and stay retired for three years. Brent Burns probably joins him. So enjoy this one while you can.
Marc-Andre Fleury will likely end the Wild’s dearth of Hall of Famers. (Ellen Schmidt / Getty Images)
The Flames have never had a top-three draft pick
In their 45 years and counting since moving from Atlanta, Calgary has never picked higher than fourth in the draft. And in fact, taking Sam Bennett with the No. 4 pick in 2014 is the only time they’ve even picked in the top five. They’ve had the sixth pick five times, including the Matthew Tkachuk pick in 2016 that turned out great. Thanks to a combination of lottery luck and a reluctance to ever truly bottom out, that’s as low as the Flames draft history can go.
Calgary isn’t the only team that can point to some draft weirdness. Red Wings fans will gladly tell you about their recent lottery luck, although they’ve at least picked first overall three times in franchise history. The Vancouver Canucks have never had the first pick, but have picked second four times (and they did briefly own the top pick in 1999 as part of Brian Burke’s draft-floor maneuvering to land the Sedins). The Wild have never picked higher than third. You get the idea.
But nobody can compare with the Flames. You know those painfully awkward draft day photos of the top three prospects, wearing their new sweaters and holding up their fingers to signal which pick they were? You’ve never seen a Flames logo in one of those.
Odds it ends soon: With a little lottery luck, this could be the year.
The Stars have never won a Hart Trophy (or even come close)
You can take this one back to the Minnesota North Stars days, which means all the way back to 1967. Expansion cousins like the Penguins, Flyers, Kings and Blues have all taken home the coveted trophy since then. But not the Stars.
On its own, a team not having won the Hart isn’t especially shocking — for example, the Flames haven’t won one either. But they’ve at least come close, with Jarome Iginla narrowly missing out in 2002, the first of four times in six seasons that a Flame was a finalist. What makes the Stars’ drought more impressive is that they’ve never even come close. The only player in franchise history to even be a finalist was Jamie Benn back in 2016, and he got eight first-place votes that year, just slightly behind Patrick Kane’s 121.
Odds it ends soon: The Stars are stacked these days, but that might work against them, since they don’t have that one forward who stands head and shoulders above his teammates. Maybe Mikko Rantanen gets there someday, but for now, this one feels like it could last a while.
The Senators have never won a Game 7
Oh, they’ve played in them. Six times, to be exact, spread across 17 playoff appearances in their 33-year history. They’ve just never won any of them.
And despite what you might assume, we can’t really blame the one-sided Battle of Ontario for this one. The Sens have lost a pair of Game 7 showdowns to the Leafs in 2002 and 2004. But the rest have been spread around, starting with the team’s first playoff heartbreak, an opening-round overtime loss to the Sabres in their postseason debut in 1997. They also lost to the Rangers in the first round in 2012. And then there were a pair of devastating near-misses in the conference final: to the 2003 Devils (i.e. the Jeff Friesen game) and the 2017 Penguins (i.e., the Chris Kunitz game).
Odds it ends soon: Reasonable. They’ve got to get to the playoffs first, obviously, and that’s no sure thing this year. But in this mess of an Eastern Conference, we’ll probably be flipping coins all spring, so the Senators have as good a chance as anyone at getting a winner-take-all win.
Let’s end this off with a few more that don’t quite fit into the category of “never,” but have stretched on for way longer than you’d think.
Connor McDavid has never won his division. (Cameron Bartlett / Getty Images)
The Oilers haven’t finished first in their division in 39 years
I have to double-check this one each time I see it. Yes, this goes all the way back to 1987, which was the peak of the Wayne Gretzky dynasty. Yes, it includes the entire Connor McDavid era. If you’re keeping track, the Oilers have won two Stanley Cups and been to the Final on three other occasions over this span. But after finishing first in the Smythe Division for six straight seasons from 1981-82 until 1986-87, the Oilers apparently figured that was enough. It hasn’t happened since.
Over that time, the Oilers have finished second 11 times, in all of the Smythe, the Northwest, the Pacific and even the Scotia NHL® North Division during that one year that literally nobody called it that. But never first. It’s the longest active drought in the league, one year ahead of the New York Islanders.
Odds it ends soon: You’d have to say pretty high, since the Pacific stinks this year. The Oilers are neck-and-neck with the Knights for top spot, so this one could fall.
The Red Wings haven’t won a Vezina in 71 years
That would be 1955, when Terry Sawchuk won his third as a Wing. Before that, they also got wins from Normie Smith and Johnny Mowers. But ever since, they’ve been shut out, no pun intended.
In fairness, the Vezina is a little weird — it went from the award for best goalie at its inception in 1926 to 1946, to being a stat-based award that was basically the equivalent of today’s Jennings from 1947 to 1981, and then back to being the best goalie award from 1982 until now. If you’d rather sub in the first-team All-Star honors as a proxy for “best goalie,” then the Wings have won more recently — but that was Roger Crozier in 1965, so we’re still back in the Original Six days.
In fact, they’ve only had one finalist in the modern era: Chris Osgood in 1996, when he finished second to Jim Carey. That was the year before the Wings won the first of four modern Cups, and also the last year they were in the conversation for the league’s best goaltending. How do you win that many Cups without elite goaltending? I’m not sure, but I’m guessing that having Nicklas Lidstrom helps a bit.
Odds it ends soon: It won’t happen this year, but maybe Sebastian Cossa will save us someday.
The Canadiens haven’t had a 40-goal scorer in 32 years
The last two Habs to score 40 goals in a season were Vincent Damphousse in 1993-94 and Brian Bellows in 1992-93. And if you want to rephrase it as scoring more than 40 goals in a season, you have to go all the way back to Stéphane Richer in 1989-90.
Since that season, 262 players have topped 40 goals. None of them have been Habs. The closest anyone has come in recent years is Max Pacioretty’s 39 goals in 2013-14.
Odds it ends soon: Cole Caufield has 20 goals through 42 games, putting him just behind a 40-goal pace. You have to figure he hits the mark eventually, and Nick Suzuki, Juraj Slafkovský and Ivan Demidov could all be candidates down the road.
The Rangers haven’t had a player lead the league in goals or points in 84 years
That takes us back to 1941-42, when Lynn Patrick’s 32 goals and Bryan Hextall’s 56 points both led the league. Since then, the Rangers haven’t topped the NHL in either category. That’s despite having four players, three of them forwards, win the Hart Trophy over that time. Their nearest miss came in 2005-06, when Jaromir Jagr finished second in both categories.
By the way, the Art Ross trophy didn’t exist until 1947, meaning no Ranger has ever won it. They’re somehow not even the only Original Six team that’s true for — while Auston Matthews has won several goal-scoring titles, no Maple Leafs have led the league in points since Gordie Drillon in 1937-38.
Odds it ends soon: (checks current stats) (checks prospect pipeline) We might be able to get this one to the century mark.