1995–96 NHL season
National Hockey League season
The 1995–96 NHL season was the 79th regular season of the National Hockey League. As part of the league's new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) signed after the 1994–95 NHL lockout, each team began playing 82 games per season. The Quebec Nordiques relocated to Denver, Colorado, becoming the Colorado Avalanche. The Stanley Cup winners were the Avalanche, who swept the Florida Panthers in the finals, in four games.
League business
Franchise relocation
The 1995–96 season was the first season in Denver for the Avalanche, who had relocated from Quebec City where they were previously known as the Quebec Nordiques. Prior to the season, Colorado was assigned to the Pacific Division of the Western Conference. They played at McNichols Arena from 1976 to 1982 before they were purchased and moved to become the New Jersey Devils. The Avs would play in that building until they moved to the Pepsi Center in 1999.
It was also the final season for the Winnipeg Jets until the 2011–12 season, as the franchise's assets relocated from Manitoba to Arizona and become the Phoenix Coyotes at season's end. The NHL would not return to Manitoba until the Atlanta Thrashers moved there to become the "new" Jets in 2011.
The public source identifies “1995–96 NHL season” as national Hockey League season. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around season, National and Hockey.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “1995–96 NHL season”, the useful work is to connect “national Hockey League season” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1960822. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1995, 1994, 1976 and 1982.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “1995–96 NHL season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.