1993–94 NHL season

Expansion

The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and the Florida Panthers started play this season, increasing the league to 26 teams. The Ducks became the second team in the Greater Los Angeles area after the Los Angeles Kings, while the Panthers became the second team in the state of Florida after the Tampa Bay Lightning. The 1993 NHL expansion draft was held on June 24 to fill the rosters of the Mighty Ducks and the Panthers.

Stars relocation

The Minnesota North Stars relocated to Dallas, Texas to become the Dallas Stars. It was the first franchise relocation for the NHL since the Colorado Rockies became the New Jersey Devils in 1982–83.

Realignment

The names of the conferences were changed from Campbell and Wales to Western and Eastern respectively, and the divisions' names were changed from Adams, Patrick, Norris, and Smythe to Northeast, Atlantic, Central, and Pacific respectively.^[4] Each division had changes. The Northeast Division would welcome the Pittsburgh Penguins, previously from the Patrick Division. The Atlantic Division would welcome the newcomer Florida Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning, previously from the Norris Division. The Central Division would welcome the Winnipeg Jets, previously from the Smythe Division. The Pacific Division would welcome the newcomer Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. New league commissioner Gary Bettman, who had previously worked in the National Basketball Association (NBA), thought the old names could be confusing to non-traditional fans and believed that a change to geographically named divisions, as used in the NBA and most other North American professional sports, would be more easily understandable to new fans.

In addition, the playoff format was changed to a conference based seeding over division specific brackets: the division winners were seeded one-two by order of point finish, then the top six remaining teams in the conference were seeded three through eight.^[4][5] However, unlike the NBA, the NHL matched the highest-seeded winners against the lowest-seeded winners in the second round. In order to reduce the number of long trips to and from the West Coast, whenever a Central Division team played a Pacific Division team in the playoffs, the format was 2–3–2 rather than the traditional 2–2–1–1–1, a format that was only used for the 1993–94 season.

Entry draft

The 1993 NHL entry draft was held on June 26, 1993, at the Colisée de Québec in Quebec City, Quebec. Alexandre Daigle was selected first overall by the Ottawa Senators.

Rule changes

The high-sticking rules were amended to allow goals hit by a stick below the height of the crossbar, instead of the height of the player's shoulders like other situations.^[6]

Neutral site games

This was the second regular season that the NHL and Bruce McNall's Multivision Marketing and Public Relations Co. organized games held in cities without a franchise as a litmus test for future expansion. With the addition of the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and the Florida Panthers to the league, the number of these games increased from 24 to 26.

The Dallas Stars played a neutral-site game in their previous market of Minnesota at the Target Center in Minneapolis, where they were greeted enthusiastically. The Minnesota North Stars' tradition of playing on New Year's Eve and holding a post-game skate on the ice was also continued with a game between the Philadelphia Flyers and Boston Bruins.

The Tampa Bay Lightning–Detroit Red Wings contest in Minneapolis was scheduled for Martin Luther King Day, a Monday, with an afternoon face-off at 2:05 PM. However, due to an error on the NHL's part, the Lightning believed themselves to be playing at 7:35 PM, an error that was only discovered two weeks prior to the game by reporters. The Lightning ended up playing an 8:05 PM game in Winnipeg, flying back to the U.S., and playing again 18 hours later in Minneapolis.

The Panthers, in the midst of a playoff race, played a March "home" game against the Toronto Maple Leafs in Hamilton, Ontario.

All-Star Game

The All-Star Game was held in Madison Square Garden in New York City, home of the New York Rangers, on January 22, 1994. The conference-based all-star teams were renamed to reflect the league's new Eastern and Western conferences.

Highlights

The Panthers and Mighty Ducks set new records for first-year expansion teams. Both teams finished with 33 wins, surpassing the 31 wins of the Philadelphia Flyers and Los Angeles Kings in 1967–68. That mark would not be topped by another expansion team until the Vegas Golden Knights notched their 34th win in their inaugural season on February 1, 2018, finishing with 51.^[7] The Panthers also set a high-water mark in points, with 83 points, surpassing the previous record set by the Flyers' 73 points in 1967–68. The Golden Knights would eventually shatter this inaugural expansion team record by 26 points notching a total of 109 points in 2017–18. Wayne Gretzky became the all-time goal-scoring leader on March 23rd, 1994, surpassing Gordie Howe's record of 801 goals. The record would eventually be broken by Alexander Ovechkin on April 6, 2025.

Final standings

bold – Qualified for playoffs; x – Won division; p – Won Presidents' Trophy (and division); * – Division leader

Divisions: CEN – Central, PAC – Pacific

bold – Qualified for playoffs; x – Won division; y – Won Conference (and division); * – Division leader

       No = Division rank, CR = Conference rank, W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, GF = Goals For, GA = Goals Against, Pts = Points
       Teams that qualified for the playoffs are highlighted in bold.

Bracket

The top eight teams in each conference made the playoffs, with the two division winners seeded 1–2 based on regular season records, and the six remaining teams seeded 3–8. In each round, teams competed in a best-of-seven series (scores in the bracket indicate the number of games won in each best-of-seven series). The NHL used "re-seeding" instead of a fixed bracket playoff system. During the first three rounds, the highest remaining seed in each conference was matched against the lowest remaining seed, the second-highest remaining seed played the second-lowest remaining seed, and so forth. The higher-seeded team was awarded home-ice advantage. The two conference winners then advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals.

All-Star teams

Scoring leaders

^[9]

Leading goaltenders

^[11]

Debuts

The following is a list of players of note who played their first NHL game in 1993–94 (listed with their first team, asterisk(*) marks debut in playoffs):

• Chris Osgood, Detroit Red Wings
• Jason Arnott, Edmonton Oilers
• Kirk Maltby, Edmonton Oilers
• Rob Niedermayer, Florida Panthers
• Chris Pronger, Hartford Whalers
• Donald Brashear, Montreal Canadiens
• Jason Smith, New Jersey Devils
• Zigmund Palffy, New York Islanders
• Mattias Norstrom, New York Rangers
• Todd Marchant, New York Rangers
• Alexandre Daigle, Ottawa Senators
• Alexei Yashin, Ottawa Senators
• Pavol Demitra, Ottawa Senators
• Markus Naslund, Pittsburgh Penguins
• Jocelyn Thibault, Quebec Nordiques
• Ian Laperriere, St. Louis Blues
• Chris Gratton, Tampa Bay Lightning
• Yanic Perreault, Toronto Maple Leafs
• Michael Peca, Vancouver Canucks
• Jason Allison, Washington Capitals

Last games

The following is a list of players of note who played their last game in the NHL in 1993–94 (listed with their last team):

• Gordie Roberts, Boston Bruins
• Dave Christian, Chicago Blackhawks
• Michel Goulet, Chicago Blackhawks
• Mike Foligno, Florida Panthers
• Brian Propp, Hartford Whalers
• Dave Taylor, Los Angeles Kings
• Keith Acton, New York Islanders
• Rob Ramage, Philadelphia Flyers
• Bryan Trottier, Pittsburgh Penguins

Eastern Conference

Western Conference

Canada

This was the sixth season of the league's Canadian national broadcast rights deals with TSN and Hockey Night in Canada on CBC. This was the last regular season before Saturday night doubleheaders became permanent on HNIC on CBC. TSN televised selected regular season weeknight games. Coverage of the Stanley Cup playoffs was primarily on CBC, with TSN airing first round all-U.S. series.

United States

This was the second season of ESPN's deal for U.S. national broadcast rights,^[12] while NBC televised the All-Star Game for the fifth and final consecutive season.

ESPN's weekly regular season games were generally broadcast on Wednesdays and Fridays. ESPN also had Sunday games between the NFL and baseball seasons.^[13] ESPN2 also began showing up to five games per week, branded as NHL Fire on Ice.^[14]

ESPN's brokered deal with sister broadcast network ABC expanded to include weekly regional telecasts on the last three Sunday afternoons of the regular season.^[15][16] This marked the first time that regular season NHL games were broadcast on American network television since 1974–75.^[17] ABC then televised playoff games on first three Sundays of the postseason.^[18] ESPN and ESPN2 televised selected first and second-round games. ESPN then had the Conference finals and the Stanley Cup Finals.

After the season, the NHL reached a five-year deal with Fox, replacing ABC and NBC as the league's U.S. broadcast television partner.^[19]