Description
The 1983 Stanley Cup Finals NHL championship series was contested by the Edmonton Oilers in their first-ever Finals appearance and the defending champion New York Islanders, in their fourth, and fourth consecutive, Finals appearance. The Islanders would win the best-of-seven series four games to none, to win their fourth-straight and fourth-overall Stanley Cup. It was also the fourth straight Finals of post-1967 expansion teams, and the first involving a former World Hockey Association (WHA) team. This is also the most recent time that a defending Stanley Cup champion has won the cup four years in a row, and also the first (and, to date, only) time a North American professional sports team has won four consecutive titles in any league competition with more than twenty teams. Since 1983, no professional sports team on the continent has managed to win four straight championships and no NHL team has won more than two consecutive championships (most recently the Detroit Red Wings in 1997 and 1998).
This would be the first of eight consecutive Finals contested by a team from Alberta (of which the Oilers played in six and the Calgary Flames in two). Although it was not the first Stanley Cup Finals to be contested by an Albertan team (the 1923and 1924 Finals had been contested by teams from Edmonton and Calgary respectively), 1983 saw the first Finals games played in Alberta.
