Hockey fans know how the story goes: win the Stanley Cup and suddenly every team tries to emulate your roster and playing style.
Hate to burst the bubble, but I don't see it happening this time.
That's not to slag on the Pittsburgh Penguins or what they achieved. No one wins the Stanley Cup on a fluke, but you need more than just players and a coaching system to win. You need skill, luck, health, and even more luck.
An objective observer should be able to say with a straight face that Pittsburgh's goaltending and defense had a wildly up-and-down run in the playoffs. For every amazing steal Marc-Andre Fleury made, there was another groan inducing soft goal. For every (okay, maybe not every) miraculous Rob Scuderi-as-goalie play, there were also instances of sheer panic on the penalty kill, especially in the Detroit series.
What does it all mean? Well, the Pittsburgh Penguins are a talented but flawed roster — and to their credit, they overcame those flaws with a few lucky bounces and unsung heroes stepping up at the right time. But to try and emulate the Penguins is an equally flawed proposition.
First off, it's impossible to replicate what Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin bring to the table. It just is. The defense, though, isn't exactly the perfect combination of grit and skill (and one has to wonder how Hal Gill would have performed if the officiating didn't let up on calling interference), and Marc-Andre Fleury has yet to show the consistency one would want in an ideal starting goalie.
That being said, every team with all of the pieces in place (at least on paper) should feel hope in the Penguins win. (That doesn't include teams with huge holes, such as the New York "Non-Scoring" Rangers or the Tampa Bay "No Defense" Lightning.) What the Penguins have shown is that a team that has the right foundation of talent, despite its flaws, can overcome them to win it all. No playoff series is set in stone, as much as it seems that way.
Where does that leave the Boston Bruins and San Jose Sharks of the world? Those teams thought they had it all, though injuries, bad bounces, and a failure of certain players to fulfill their potential all prompted an early exit. Still, there's such a fine line between winning and losing among the upper-tier of NHL teams that the situations could have easily been flipped with a few bounces going the other way.
That's the thing with the post-lockout NHL. While there still is a meme about just giving up and handing the Cup over to Detroit, the fact of the matter is that so many things have to go right for a team. There are plenty of things that coaches and players can't control, from injuries to weird bounces. Hell, even the little bit of magic that turned Rob Scuderi from run-of-the-mill No. 4 defenseman into a shut-down deity is a little bit of a mystery; while Scuderi's bound to cash in on that, there's a pretty good chance that we'll use the word "overpaid" in conjunction with him over the next few years. That's the power of playing well during the Cup final.
Long story short, there's no magic formula to winning and there's no perfect team. You could have the best regular season in the league, only to let injuries and inconsistent secondary scoring derail you (San Jose). You could have an unbeatable mystique only to have support players come back down to earth at the wrong time (Detroit). You could have an immensely talented roster and show-stealing young goalie only to have everything implode in a pivotal Game 7 at home (Washington).
Or you could have a group of high-flying forwards, patchy defense, and talented-but-inconsistent goaltending go on to win the Stanley Cup because they overcame their glaring errors (and boy, did the glare at times like Game 5) through a combination of hard work and luck to beat the odds and hoist Lord Stanley.
Skill, luck, health, and even more luck. For teams that are wondering "Where did it all go wrong?" chances are one of those four things copped out at the wrong time. As Pittsburgh showed, that doesn't mean that good things won't happen next year.
June 23, 2009
Chris from VA:
Talent and skill can only get you part way. In the long, grueling NHL playoffs, it all comes down to heart and team chemistry, I think. The Pens won because they refused to lose, and they worked together so well because they trusted each other to come through in the pinch. Unfortunately, heart and team chemistry is harder to come by than skill.