The season featured notable individual scoring milestones.
Wayne Gretzky of the Edmonton Oilers broke Bobby Orr's single season assist record, scoring 109 assists, and Phil Esposito's point record, scoring 164 points. He won his second of an unmatched eight straight Hart Trophies as the league's most valuable player
Mike Bossy of the New York Islanders became only the second man in NHL history to score 50 goals in his first 50 games. In the 50th game, played at his home rink, he had 48 goals going into the 3rd and final period (before the advent of overtime games). Bossy admitted being so embarrassed and upset that he contemplated not going out on the ice for the final period. However, Bossy got his 49th goal with 5:15 left to go in the game and the 50th with 1:50 remaining, sending the Nassau Coliseum into a delirium. Maurice Richard, the only other man to accomplish this feat, was on hand to congratulate him.
Bossy's Islanders finished as regular season champions with 110 points with the St. Louis Blues finishing a close second at 107 points.
Final standings
Note: GP = Games played, W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, Pts = Points, GF = Goals for, GA = Goals against, PIM = Penalties in minutes Note: Teams that qualified for the playoffs are highlighted in bold
bold – The top 16 teams in the league qualified for the playoffs, regardless of division or conference. x – Won division; y – Won Conference (and division); p – Won Presidents' Trophy (and conference and division)
The top 16 teams in the league made the playoffs, and were seeded 1–16, regardless of division or conference. The NHL used "re-seeding" instead of a fixed bracket playoff system: in each round, the highest remaining seed played against the lowest remaining seed, the second-highest remaining seed faced the second-lowest remaining seed, and so forth.
In the preliminary round, teams competed in a best-of-five series. In the other three rounds, teams competed in a best-of-seven series (scores in the bracket indicate the number of games won in each series).
The following is a list of players of note who played their first NHL game in 1980–81 (listed with their first team, asterisk(*) marks debut in playoffs):
This was the first season that U.S. national broadcasts were only on cable television. ESPN and USA continued to carry slates of regular season and playoff games for the second consecutive season.
Dryden, Steve, ed. (2000). Century of hockey. Toronto, ON: McClelland & Stewart Ltd. ISBN0-7710-4179-9.
Fischler, Stan; Fischler, Shirley; Hughes, Morgan; Romain, Joseph; Duplacey, James (2003). The Hockey Chronicle: Year-by-Year History of the National Hockey League. Lincolnwood, Illinois: Publications International Inc. ISBN0-7853-9624-1.
