The 1931 Stanley Cup Finals was played between the Montreal Canadiens and the Chicago Black Hawks, making their first Stanley Cup Finals appearance. The defending champions Canadiens, won the series to become the second NHL team to win back-to-back championships. Former player and now coach, Chicago's Dick Irvin, made his Finals coaching debut against the team he would later coach to three Stanley Cup titles.

Game summaries

Over 18,000 fans packed Chicago Stadium for game two to set a record for the largest attendance in hockey history to that time.^{[citation needed]} The triple-overtime game three of the series was (at the time) the longest game in Stanley Cup Finals history, and today remains the fourth-longest game in Stanley Cup Finals history at 113:50.^{[citation needed]}

Game five

For game five, Foster Hewitt came to Montreal to make the radio broadcast play-by-play and transmission lines carried his broadcast to radio stations across Canada Interest was so high that Montrealers in the thousands lined up for end zone and standing room tickets.^{[citation needed]} Johnny Gagnon opened the scoring in the second period and Howie Morenz scored an insurance goal in the third period. It ended a nine-game goalless streak for Morenz.^[1]

Stanley Cup engraving

The 1931 Stanley Cup was presented to Canadiens captain Sylvio Mantha by NHL President Frank Calder following the Canadiens 2–0 win over the Black Hawks in game five.

The following Canadiens players and staff had their names engraved on the Stanley Cup

1930–31 Montreal Canadiens

Players

† Left off the Cup, but qualified to be on it. ^A Played three of five games in the Finals. ^B Played 22 of 44 regular season games.

Stanley Cup engraving

• Officially, owner Leo Dandurand was the Manager of the Montreal Canadiens from 1921–22 to 1934–35. However, Cecil Hart was engraved on the Stanley Cup in 1930 and 1931, and he is listed on every team picture for those seasons as Manager. Leo Dandurand would later get his name on the Grey Cup as the President (owner) of Montreal Allouettes in 1949. This made Leo Dandurand the 4th person to win both the Stanley Cup and Grey Cup. (See Joe Miller, Lionel Conacher, Carl Voss, Harold Ballard, Norman Kwong & Wayne Gretzky other persons who won both the Grey Cup and Stanley Cup.)
• *-The team physician's first name remains unknown
• Hilarion A. "Louis" Letourneau (Owner/Director) gave up position on Board of Directors of the Montreal Canadiens after the 1930 Stanley Cup. He would sell his shares in 1932. So name was not included on the 1931 Stanley Cup engraving.