It has only happened four times in the history of the NHL.
In 1942, the Toronto Maple Leafs came back from 3-0 to defeat the Detroit Red Wings in the Stanley Cup Final. In 1975, the New York Islanders accomplished the feat against the Pittsburgh Penguins in their Wales Conference quarterfinal series. In 2010, the Philadelphia Flyers shocked the Boston Bruins in the Eastern Conference Semifinals.
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And, the most recent case in 2014 involved the Los Angeles Kings looking lifeless in their first three games in the opening round against the San Jose Sharks, only to storm back, win the series, and go on to win the Stanley Cup.
Coming back from down 3-0 to win a series in the NHL is extremely rare air, as the 209 other teams in NHL history that have gone down 3-0 went on to lose their respective series. But, even if it’s near-impossible, it’s not, in fact, impossible, and it has happened. Special teams make history for a reason.
And, this year, there are three different opportunities in the first round of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs for history to repeat itself. The Ottawa Senators trail the Carolina Hurricanes by a 3-0 series deficit, as do the Kings against the mighty Colorado Avalanche.
Then, there are the Penguins, who are on the brink of getting swept by their cross-state rival Flyers.
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These teams have both been players in this situation before: The Penguins were on the wrong end of it in 1975, while the Flyers did the improbable in 2010. It is the Penguins who are faced with the improbable this time around, and – to be quite frank – they have looked much like the Kings did in 2014 prior to their out-of-the-blue comeback against the Sharks. And they look just like most of those 209 other teams that couldn’t pull off historical feats.
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In Games 1 and 2 in 2014, the Kings lost 6-3 and 7-2, respectively. They did take home a 4-3 overtime loss in Game 3, which – oftentimes – is the nail in the coffin for teams in that situation. But they somehow flipped a switch, and they found a way to dominate the remaining four games. They won by sequential scores of 6-3, 3-0, 4-1, and 5-1, and – again – went on to defeat the New York Rangers in five games during the Stanley Cup Final.
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There was belief, just like there is with a lot of teams in this situation. And that belief is still alive and well in the Penguins’ locker room, despite the daunting task that lies ahead of them.
And one Penguins’ player has some experience in this arena, as his former team came pretty close to accomplishing the feat.
“You win one game, and a lot of things can happen, a lot of things can change,” said goaltender Stuart Skinner, whose Edmonton Oilers recovered from a 3-0 deficit against the Florida Panthers in the 2024 Stanley Cup Final only to lose in Game 7. “As a team that’s up 3-0, and you lose that first game… it’s a tight second game, and you end up losing that second game… I mean, it’s a series. Momentum shifts, and that can change a lot of things. One win can do a lot.”
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During media availability following Friday’s practice, Skinner recalled that series, talking about how – one by one – plays built up throughout Game 4 that snowballed and allowed Edmonton to find their game again, forcing Florida to back into a bit of a corner. They took it one play at a time, one game at a time.
And that will be the Penguins’ focus heading into Game 4 on Saturday in Philadelphia: win one game. It can be a bit hard to get into that headspace, especially knowing that four consecutive wins are necessary to stay alive.
But Skinner dove into the mental side of things as well, and he is confident in his own ability to do that.
“I’ve done a lot of that work in, just, my career in general, because it’s the same thing in a season, too,” Skinner said. “You can be having a couple tough bad games or, just, results aren’t going your way, and you’ve got to find out how to switch that up in your mind.
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“To be honest, I’ve been in so many situations that this feels – I don’t want to say, ‘normal,’ because we’re down 3-0, but – just normal in the sense of mentally juggling. I feel like I know how to do that.”
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It helps, too, that the Penguins have a nice collection of veterans in the room who know what it takes to win. Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, and Sam Girard all have Stanley Cup wins on their resumes, and the adversity of the playoffs is something they’ve all experienced to the very end, when they – ultimately – had the chance to hoist Lord Stanley in celebration on the ice.
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“It’s pretty clear. I think, being in this position, you can’t look too far ahead, you’ve just got to look at what’s in front of you, and that’s tomorrow and making sure that we put our best game on the ice,” Crosby said. “I don’t feel like we feel like we’ve done that for a complete game yet. Maybe different parts of games, but that first period’s more of how we want to play. We just weren’t able to sustain it. So, if we can put some periods together like that, then we can give ourselves a chance.”
He added: “Ultimately, as a player, this is the best time of year, and it’s not an ideal situation. But, at the same time, we would have took this last year. So, I think it’s a matter of having the right approach, enjoying it, and just making sure we focus on what’s in front of us here.”
But, even though winning means everything to every player in that locker room, for guys like Skinner and Erik Karlsson – veterans who have “been there, done that” but never got to the finish line – defining moments like this mean even more.
The last time Karlsson skated in the playoffs prior to this season was in 2019 with the Sharks. The closest he came to the Stanley Cup Final was in 2017, when the Penguins beat the Senators in dramatic fashion during a memorable Game 7 double-overtime – and when Karlsson was the best player on the ice for either team in that series.
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Karlsson and the team know what’s at stake. But, at the end of the day, he’s also aware that it’s important to embrace the feeling of playing in the hardest postseason in sports, having fun with it, and understanding the opportunity that lies in front of them.
“We’re going to have to embrace and understand that being in this situation, even though we’re down 3-0, is still a lot of fun, and we would have paid a lot of money to stand here today back in October and say this is where we were going to be,” Karlsson said after Game 3. “We’ve just got to realize that and understand that we’re a good hockey team here. We’ve got a great opportunity.”
And, as who understands what it takes to come back in an a near-impossible situation, Skinner believes this group of Penguins has what it takes to seize that opportunity and do something very few others in NHL history have managed to accomplish.
“You know it’s possible,” Skinner said. “Statistics are fun to look at. But, it doesn’t mean they’re always right. What really helped me in my experience was it, kind of, just frees you up. You don’t really have anything to lose.
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“We’ve got the bodies in here. We’ve got a resilient group. I can say that over and over and over again, but we’ve proven it. We’ve shown it. This is the group that can definitely come back from this deficit. I certainly believe that.”
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