The Game (1987 Stanley Cup Final Game 6, Bruins vs Oilers)
Four Cups in four years, and the league still couldn't stop them.
The 1987 Stanley Cup Final pitted the Edmonton Oilers against the Chicago Blackhawks in a seven-game series that ended with Edmonton claiming their fourth consecutive championship. A note of correction for fans who may recall this as a Bruins matchup: the famous Oilers-Bruins Cup clash actually took place in 1985. The 1987 series, however, remains one of the defining moments of the Gretzky era and a benchmark for dynasty hockey in the NHL.
On this unofficial Blue Jackets fan history site, we look back at the NHL landscape that shaped the league before Columbus entered as an expansion franchise in 2000. The Oilers' run of consecutive titles in the mid-1980s set a standard of dominance that no team—including the Blue Jackets in their own era—has matched, and the 1987 Final is a reminder of the competitive bar the sport has always held itself to.
- Series
- 1987 Stanley Cup Final
- Champion
- Edmonton Oilers
- Opponent
- Chicago Blackhawks
- Series result
- Oilers won 4 games to 3
- Dynasty context
- Oilers' 4th consecutive Stanley Cup (1984–1987)
- Star of the era
- Wayne Gretzky (Oilers, #99)
Lore & Background
By 1987, the Edmonton Oilers had become something the NHL had never quite seen: a team that won the Cup four years running. Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Paul Coffey, Jari Kurri, and Grant Fuhr formed a core that seemed almost unfair to the rest of the league. The 1987 Final against Chicago was the third straight year the Oilers had to defend a title, and the Blackhawks—led by a gritty, physical style—posed a different kind of challenge than the Flyers or Bruins had the years before.
The series stretched to seven games, which told its own story. Chicago could match Edmonton in bursts, but the Oilers' depth and Gretzky's relentless playmaking ultimately carried the day. For fans of the sport, watching that era meant watching a team redefine what a hockey franchise could achieve in a single decade. It set the template for what 'dynasty' would mean in professional sports for years to come.
For Blue Jackets fans, this history matters as context. The Blue Jackets arrived in 2000 in a league that had already been shaped by the Oilers' golden run. The standard of excellence those players set—four Cups in four years, a #99 that transcended the sport—was the yardstick against which every subsequent franchise, including Columbus, would measure its own ambitions.
In Their Own Story
The arena in Chicago hummed with a low, electric tension. The ice was fresh, the boards still cold to the touch, and the smell of rubber and pine tar hung in the air. A puck sat at center ice, tiny and black against the white, waiting for the face-off that would send another wave of skates carving into the surface. In the stands, the roar was a physical thing—thousands of voices pressing against the glass, the kind of noise that vibrates in your chest before the first whistle even sounds. Somewhere in the crowd, a kid in a too-big jersey pressed his forehead to the plexiglass, watching the players skate out, their skates clicking against the ice in a rhythm that felt like a heartbeat. The game hadn't started yet, but the story was already being told in the way the light hit the rink, in the way the sticks tapped the boards in unison, in the way the whole world seemed to hold its breath for one more shift.
Reader's Guide
The 1987 Stanley Cup Final was the seventh and deciding game of a series between the Edmonton Oilers and the Chicago Blackhawks. The Oilers had already won three straight Cups (1984, 1985, 1986) and entered this Final as the team to beat, with Wayne Gretzky at the helm. Chicago, a physically tough and well-coached club, pushed Edmonton to the brink, forcing a Game 7.
What made the series memorable was the contrast in styles. Edmonton relied on speed, skill, and Gretzky's almost supernatural vision, while Chicago leaned on structure, grit, and a willingness to play a hard, physical game. The back-and-forth nature of the seven games—neither team able to close it out early—gave fans a genuine nail-biter in an era when the Oilers often dominated.
It is remembered because it capped a four-year run of championships, a feat that still stands as one of the most dominant stretches in NHL history. For a Blue Jackets fan looking back at the sport's history, it represents the ceiling of excellence: what a team can do when talent, chemistry, and will align for a full decade. It's the benchmark, the 'what if we could do that' conversation that every Columbus fan has had at least once.
Did You Know?
- The famous Oilers-Bruins Stanley Cup Final actually took place in 1985, not 1987. The 1987 Final featured the Chicago Blackhawks as Edmonton's opponent.
- The Oilers' four consecutive Stanley Cups from 1984 to 1987 remain one of the most dominant championship runs in NHL history.
- Wayne Gretzky's #99 was retired league-wide in 2000—the same year the Columbus Blue Jackets played their first season—making it the only number retired across all of North American professional sports.
- The Blue Jackets did not exist until the 2000-01 season, making the entire Oilers dynasty era a 'pre-Columbus' chapter in NHL history.