The Last 10 American Sports Teams to Three-Peat

Winning one championship, in any high-level sport around North America, can be a Herculean feat.

Along with amassing a vast collection of talent, any number of other factors are significant. Everything from coaching and injury luck to favorable schedules and fortunate breaks can shape who's lifting a trophy.

Navigating that path in three straight years, though? Legendary.

As the Kansas City Chiefs take aim at history in Super Bowl LIX—never before has an NFL team three-peated—we're looking back at the last 10 major North American teams to win three consecutive titles.

The list considered top-division NCAA football, men's and women's basketball, along with MLB, MLS, the NBA, NHL, NFL and WNBA.

The premier NHL team for nearly three decades, the Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup six times in the 1970s. Most memorably, they ended the decade with four straight championships.

As you can imagine, the roster was loaded with Hall of Famers.

Star winger Guy Lafleur peaked in this stretch, leading the NHL in points for three consecutive years. Ken Dryden won the Vezina Trophy as the league's top goaltender in all four seasons behind key defensemen Guy Lapointe, Larry Robinson and Serge Savard—the list goes on.

Among the numerous records set, Montreal became the first franchise ever to reach 60 victories in a season.

Immediately on the heels of Montreal's streak, the New York Islanders put together their own dynastic run.

Mike Bossy, Bryan Trottier and Clark Gillies propelled the Isles to four Stanley Cup triumphs in a row. They all later entered the Hall of Fame, along with defenseman Denis Potvin and goaltender Brian Smith.

Unlike the Canadiens, though, New York didn't have a long history of success in the NHL. An expansion team that debuted in 1972-73—with 30 points in 78 games, still one of the worst seasons ever—the Islanders ripped off this streak in their first decade of existence.

New York narrowly missed a fifth straight Stanley Cup, falling to Wayne Gretzky and the emerging Edmonton Oilers dynasty in 1984.

It sure helped to have that Michael Jordan guy, huh?

After a string of playoff eliminations in the 1980s, the Chicago Bulls finally broke through in 1990-91 and kept on winning.

Jordan keyed the Bulls' two-part three-peat during the decade—with a brief intermission for baseball—and began to cement his legacy as the greatest of all time. Chicago ended the Showtime-era Los Angeles Lakers dynasty in 1991, and then defeated the Portland Trail Blazers and Phoenix Suns in 1992 and 1993, respectively.

It wasn't all about Jordan, of course; the Phil Jackson-coached roster also featured Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, Bill Cartwright and John Paxson in the starting lineup.

Chicago swept five of the 12 playoff series in this stretch as MJ secured NBA Finals MVP each season.

When she retired in 2016, Pat Summitt had amassed the most victories (1,098) as a coach in college basketball history.

Every single one of them happened at Tennessee, which she guided to eight national championships during her 38-year tenure. Best of all, the Lady Vols won three straight NCAA titles from 1996 to 1998.

The interesting part of UT's streak is that it didn't dominate each season. The team—led by Chamique Holdsclaw, a four-time All-American—entered the 1996 tournament with four setbacks, and then had a 10-loss record in 1997 but went undefeated in 1998.

Tennessee became only the third women's program to finish unbeaten and win a national title.

As the Bulls neared the 1993-94 campaign aiming for a fourth straight title, Jordan abruptly retired. He played baseball in the Chicago White Sox system in 1994 but announced his return to the NBA in March 1995. In the Jordan-less vacuum, Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets won back-to-back titles.

MJ shook off the rust, and the Bulls came roaring back.

Chicago, now leaning on Jordan, Pippen and Dennis Rodman, immediately set a then-NBA record with 72 wins in the regular season. The team cruised to a 16-3 record in the playoffs, toppling the Seattle SuperSonics to reclaim the throne atop the league.

After the return to greatness, the Bulls notched two more 60-win seasons and upended the Utah Jazz in two straight NBA Finals, the first of which featured MJ's famous flu-game performance in Game 5.

At the outset of the WNBA, nobody could match the Houston Comets.

Cynthia Cooper, a legend at USC in the 1980s, surged into late-career domestic stardom after playing overseas for a decade. She earned the first two MVP honors in league history, leading the Comets to four straight WNBA titles and earning Finals MVP each season.

Meanwhile, future Hall of Fame inductees Sheryl Swoopes and Tina Thompson began their professional careers with the streak.

Houston folded as a franchise after the 2008 season, but it clearly set the standard for the fledgling league.

The impressive list of players—Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, among many others—on these New York Yankees teams snapped a World Series drought of nearly two decades and didn't stop there.

During the seven-year stretch from 1996 to 2001, the Bronx Bombers played in five World Series and won four.

In 1998, the Yanks defeated the San Diego Padres. They followed that up with a sweep of the Atlanta Braves in 1999, then bested the crosstown New York Mets in the memorable 2000 Subway Series.

Although the Arizona Diamondbacks prevented a four-peat in 2001 with Luis Gonzalez's walk-off single in Game 7, this era of the Yankees—who also hoisted the Commissioner's Trophy in 1996—is remembered as one of the greatest MLB dynasties.

In the wake of Chicago's second three-peat, Phil Jackson hung up the whistle with no specific interest in coaching again.

That thought lasted one year.

Following the strike-shortened 1999-2000 season, the Lakers hired the Zen Master to manage a roster with Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant and all the associated drama and personalities. The decision worked beautifully, even as the star players clashed at times.

Los Angeles beat the Indiana Pacers to begin the streak, then dropped a single postseason game en route to rolling the Philadelphia 76ers in 2001 and sweeping the New Jersey Nets in 2002.

The history of the NBA includes five streaks of three-plus titles, and Jackson oversaw three of them.

Might as well consider this Part 1!

Geno Auriemma, who took control of the Connecticut program in 1985, is the winningest coach in college basketball history. His illustrious resume found its spark in 1995 when UConn rattled off an unbeaten season and won a national championship.

In the following decade, the Huskies turned into a behemoth. They added a title in 2000, then secured three consecutive crowns in the 2002, 2003 and 2004 NCAA tournaments.

Swin Cash, Sue Bird, Asjha Jones and Tamika Williams all adorned the 2002 roster with Diana Taurasi, who ushered UConn to its next two titles.

And the next streak is more impressive.

You might otherwise know the second part of UConn's excellence as "When Breanna Stewart Played in College."

Stewart played in Storrs from the 2012-13 season to 2015-16, and the Huskies won a national title each season. As if that doesn't explain the powerhouse, UConn went 151-5 during her four campaigns with two unbeaten years—and a 38-1 record, for that matter.

After holding a complementary role to Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis and Stefanie Dolson as a freshman, "Stewie" became the star. She earned National Player of the Year recognition in three straight years.

That championship in 2016 remains its most recent crown, but UConn is the only women's program with four consecutive titles.