Ranking The NHL's Best Stanley Cup Winners In The Salary Cap Era
There are no bad Stanley Cup winners.
Whether a team had to sneak into the NHL playoffs as a lower seed or got lucky with round-after-round against underachieving underdogs, if you get your name etched onto the Cup, then you must have done something right.
Still, not all championship teams are the same.
With the playoffs starting this weekend, 16 writers at The Hockey News looked back at the past 20 Stanley Cup winners and voted on who was the best in the Salary Cap Era.
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4. Chicago Blackhawks, 2009-10 (61 points)
As impressive as it was that Chicago managed to win championship after championship despite losing star players over the years to free agency, the team that started it all was stacked like few others.
You obviously had the young core players, such as Kane, Toews, Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook.
But back in 2010, before the salary cap caused the organization to make some hard roster choices, the Blackhawks also had Dustin Byfuglien, Andrew Ladd, Troy Brouwer, Brian Campbell, along with Hossa, Sharp, Bolland and so many others.
This was Chicago's first championship since 1961. It was also the year when Kane scored a Cup-clinching goal in overtime that only he seemed to realize had gone in.
5. Anaheim Ducks, 2006-07 (56 points)
If the Ducks weren't one of the most skilled teams on this list, they certainly were the scariest.
Anaheim led the playoffs in penalties, but thanks to the defensive tandem of Norris Trophy winners Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer and arguably the most effective shutdown line in NHL history – Rob Niedermayer, Samuel Pahlsson and Travis Moen – they only allowed 16 goals on 121 times shorthanded.
Not that they didn't rely on their skill.
Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry, who were in their second NHL season, combined for 32 points. At the other end of the spectrum was Teemu Selanne, who was in his 14th season and had 94 points in the regular season.
Anaheim also had Chris Kunitz, Dustin Penner and Andy McDonald, as well as goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere, whose overstuffed pads helped usher in the crackdown on goalie equipment.
6. Pittsburgh Penguins, 2008-09 (55 points)
A year after losing to Detroit in the final, Pittsburgh went back and won the rematch in seven games.
Sidney Crosby led the playoffs with 15 goals. And Evgeni Malkin, who had a playoff-leading 36 points, was named the Conn Smythe Trophy winner. But it was goalie Marc-Andre Fleury's diving save on Lidstrom with two seconds remaining in Game 7 that proved to be the difference-maker.
7. Florida Panthers, 2024-25 (52 points)
For the third straight year, the Panthers reached the Stanley Cup final. And this version, which added Brad Marchand and Seth Jones at the deadline to a Hall of Fame roster that already included Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett, Aaron Ekblad and Sergei Bobrovsky, was arguably the best of the three.
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This story was originally published April 17, 2026 at 12:32 PM.