Later today, Canadiens de Montréal will play in their first Stanley Cup Finals game in 28 years. Yes, that's right, the last time that the Canadiens played in such a game was back in 1993.
What was different back then?
Well, Canada had three different people who served as Prime Minister that year: Brian Mulroney, then Kim Campbell briefly, and finally, Jean Chrétien. Bill Clinton had just begun his first term in the White House. The Soviet Union had officially dissolved just a year and a half earlier, and there were still apartheid practices and laws in the books in South Africa, where the country was still ironing out the sweeping changes that would shortly come to the country. François Mitterrand was still President of France, Helmut Kohl was still Chancellor of a what was then a still fairly newly unified Germany (the Berlin Wall had only fallen less than four short years before). The Euro had not yet been introduced as the official currency in numerous European nations. China was not yet a superpower, but Japan still seemed to be an economic superpower, or bordering on being one. There had been a terrorist attack at the World Trade Center in New York City just months before, but nothing on the scale of what would happen more than eight years later. Few had ever heard of the internet, email, or even the "World Wide Web," all of which was shortly about to emerge.
Entertainment was still radically different back then, as well. In music, Nirvana and Pearl Jam ruled the airwaves of the still fairly new and trending, so-called "Seattle sound" bands that had emerged not long before. Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love were rock's royal couple. Guns 'n Roses was still hugely popular, but already on their way down. Three of the four Beatles were still alive. OJ Simpson was known as a football commentator for NBC Sports, and still starring in those car rental commercials. MTV still actually played music. On television, Johnny Carson had retired only one year earlier, and there was a big late night battle raging between David Letterman and Jay Leno. Cheers had only recently aired their series finale. Nobody had heard of shows like "Frasier" or "Friends" yet, let alone "reality television." The highly anticipated movie Jurassic Park was about to be released.
As for sports, the Canadiens would win the Stanley Cup for the second time in seven years. Canada had won the Stanley Cup for seven straight years from 1983-84 until 1989-90, and the victory by the Canadiens would make it eight Stanley Cup wins in an span of a decade for teams north of the border. In basketball, Michael Jordan was king, and his Bulls had just won their first three-peat, overcoming an 0-2 series deficit to the Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals, and then defeating the Phoenix Suns in six in the NBA Finals. The Dallas Cowboys had emerged as the new, powerful dynasty, and seemed set to dominate the nineties, while the Buffalo Bills had just lost their third of what would be four straight Super Bowls. The Toronto Blue Jays had won the World Series the previous year, and would eventually go on to win the Series for a second time in a row later that year. In tennis, Pete Sampras was rising, and would eventually win his second career Grand Slam title at Wimbledon just months later, following that up with a second career US Open title, and winning the year end number one ranking for the first of six consecutive years, although that would be later. Monica Seles was stabbed, and Steffi Graf rose back to the top of the women's rankings. Few people had heard of some now household names, like Martin Brodeur, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Kobe Bryant, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Serena Williams, or Tiger Woods. Sidney Crosby and LeBron James were still just kids yet. The "Curse of the Gambino" was still active in Beantown, and neither of the Chicago baseball teams had won a World Series since before the end of World War I.
In my own personal life, I had just begun college in January, at Bergen Community College, and had been elected Secretary of the Environmental Club. The college felt like a new lease on life for me, as it seemed far more interesting and challenging - but in a good way - than high school had been. At the time, it seemed that many of the people at the college were activists and much more sophisticated than me. I was still only 18 years old, and could more or less get away without shaving after a week or so, although it was pleasing that my goatee was beginning to come in a bit more pronounced than ever before. There were things like back, neck, and shoulder pains which were still blessedly far off, although I got more migraine headaches back then than I do nowadays.
What the world was like in 1993 when Canadiens last won the Cup
https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article/world-like-1993-canadiens-last-won-cup/?fbclid=IwAR3Gxh-d-_i8tJoQ4zH_GAw5j66yR-KcpoGdVPS3QJh-CdlYEa-8SW3ufaU
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