After being beaten in the Western Final in 1995 by Detroit, Toronto had an abysmal 1996 and suffered a number of injuries in 1997 which forced the team down to finishing just fifth in the Conference, despite no less than 103 points scored by Mats Sundin, 85 by Doug Gilmour and 78 by Wendel Clark. Thus, Toronto came into the Cup with a battered team, made worse when goaltender Martin Brodeur suffered a concussion when he was accidentally bashed into the boards by Chris Chelios. Despite this, Toronto battled back to beat Detroit in seven in the first round, thanks in large part due to the "Iron Curtain" defense from the Maple Leafs, made up of Jari Kurri, Dave Andreychuk, Sergei Gonchar and Chris Pronger. A five-game beating of Colorado set up a match with the 1996 Cup Champ St. Louis Blues, and the first meeting of former teammates Jari Kurri and Wayne Gretzky. The replacement for the injured Brodeur, rookie Dwayne Roloson, showed that he could ably follow in the paths of Bordeur and Felix Potvin in being an excellent starter. A vicious seven-game series resulted, but the standout of it was Kurri, who in the twilight of his career proved that he was as dangerous a player as they got. An overtime goal in game six in St. Louis by Wendel Clark sent the series to a game seven, and despite a spectacular hat trick by Gretzky, it was answered back by Gonchar, Kurri, Clark, Andreychuk and Kariya in a spectacular 7-5 win by Toronto, setting up a final between Toronto against Detroit final.
It went to seven games, to nobody's surprise, and the highest-scoring playoff game in history was the first game of the Cup final, an 8-6 win by Toronto. By this point, the injuries to Gilmour and Brodeur had healed, and while three of the best goalies in the game - Brodeur, Roloson and Osgood - were between the pipes for the teams, it was nearly impossible to stop the scoring - seven Maple Leafs (Jari Kurri, Sergei Gonchar, Wendel Clark, Dave Andreychuk, Mats Sundin, Sergei Berezin and Paul Kariya) and five Red Wings (Steve Yzerman, Brendan Shanahan, Nicklas Lidstrom, Cam Neely and Vyacheslav Kozlov) put up over ten points in the playoffs. It turned into a battle for the ages. Toronto looked almost finished in game five after a 5-2 beating in Detroit, but Toronto battled back to a 6-4 win at Maple Leaf Gardens, with a Gordie How hat trick to Shanahan after he and Darren McCarty got into a massive brawl with Sergei Gonchar that wound up emptying the benches. Fittingly, the game seven winner went to Kurri, putting in the fourth goal in a 5-3 win in Detroit to allow Toronto to claim its second cup in five years. Jari Kurri announced his retirement at the end of the season, retiring after his seventh Stanley Cup with the third team.
What set the Toronto team apart in 1997 was the fact that no less than 21 players, including both Brodeur and Roloson, scored points in the playoffs alone. The Maple Leafs' depth was such that even when injuries felled their stars, they had little difficulty hanging on to much of their form, with that especially showing in the playoffs.