The 1983 Stanley Cup Finals was the championship series of the National Hockey League's (NHL) 1982–83 season, and the culmination of the 1983 Stanley Cup playoffs. It was contested by the Campbell Conference champion Edmonton Oilers in their first-ever Finals appearance and the defending Wales Conference and Cup champion New York Islanders, in their fourth consecutive and overall Finals appearance. The Islanders won the best-of-seven series, four games to none, to win their fourth consecutive and overall Stanley Cup championship. This was the fourth straight Finals of post-1967 expansion teams. The Oilers, a former World Hockey Association (WHA) franchise, stunned NHL loyalists by reaching the Finals just four years after the NHL-WHA merger. The Oilers even had the better record of the two teams, although under the format in place since the previous Finals Edmonton received home ice advantage on account of being the Campbell champion, which at the time received that advantage in odd numbered years. This is also the most recent time that an NHL team has won the Cup four years in a row, and also the first (and, to date, only) time a North American professional sports team has won four consecutive titles in any league competition with more than twenty teams. Even if this standard is lowered to encompass league competitions of at least sixteen teams, the Islanders are still only the third and most recent franchise to accomplish such a dynasty after the New York Yankees in Major League Baseball (who have forged two such World Series dynasties - the first in the 1930s and the second in the 1950s) and the Montreal Canadiens (whose own such dynasty immediately preceded the Islanders' prior to the merger with the WHA). Since 1983, no professional sports team on the continent has won four consecutive championships and no NHL team has won more than two consecutive championships (most recently the Tampa Bay Lightning in and ). This was the second of nine consecutive Finals contested by a team from Western Canada and was the first of eight consecutive Finals contested by a team from Alberta (of which the Oilers played in six, the Calgary Flames in two, and the Vancouver Canucks in one). Although it was not the first Stanley Cup Finals to be contested by an Albertan team (the and Finals had been contested by teams from Edmonton and Calgary respectively), 1983 saw the first Finals