Montreal Canadiens win Stanley Cup
The 1959 Stanley Cup Final was contested by the defending champion Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Montreal was making its ninth consecutive appearance in the Final series. It was Toronto's first appearance since 1951. The Canadiens would win the series four games to one to win their fourth-straight Cup victory.
Montreal defeated the Chicago Black Hawks 4–2 to reach the finals. Toronto defeated the Boston Bruins 4–3 to reach the finals.
Rocket Richard, hampered by injuries, did not score at all during the playoffs. Toronto was making its first finals appearance since 1951.
Breaking the previous record of three consecutive Stanley Cup wins, the Montreal Canadiens won their fourth Cup with a four to one series win over the Toronto Maple Leafs. Toronto, undefeated in playoff overtime games that season, was unable to beat the star-laden Canadiens. For the first time in his brilliant career, Maurice Richard was held pointless in the post-season. Unfortunately, the Rocket's injuries limited him to only four out of the 11 games Montreal played. The Habs' Bernie Geoffrion and Ralph Backstrom paced all scorers with seven points apiece in the Final series.
The road to the Montreal Canadiens twelfth Stanley Cup victory had eleven stops along the way against adversaries who had failed to make it into the postseason the year before. It was also made a bit rockier by inopportune injuries that limited Maurice Richard and Jean Beliveau to only seven postseason appearances between them.
Rugged Marcel Bonin stepped into the breach and led all playoff scorers, lighting the lamp ten times while wearing an injured Rocket Richard’s gloves for most of the Habs playoff run. Dickie Moore, who led all postseason players with a dozen assists, spent much of the final series feeding Bonin, but also managed to bury the puck five times himself.
Semi-final opponents, the third-place Blackhawks stretched Montreal to six games, winning games three and four at home to tie the series before dropping the fifth and sixth and allowing the Canadiens through to the finals for the ninth spring in a row.
The last Stanley Cup confrontation between the Habs and the Leafs, in the spring of 1951 did not finish well for Montreal. This time the series again went five games but the outcome was much more satisfactory. Winning the opener 5-3 after a Bonin goal broke a 3-3 deadlock, the Habs took the second game 3-1 with Claude Provost coming to the fore with a pair of goals.
Toronto won only the third game, taking it 3-2 thanks to Dick Duff’s overtime goal before Bernard Geoffrion closed things down with the winning markers in both the fourth and final games.
The Canadiens fourth straight Stanley Cup went one better than the Toronto run a decade earlier but the Habs weren’t quite finished monopolizing Lord Stanley’s Cup.
