I disagree. Lemieux's comeback had players performing above their station like nothing I've ever seen. Andrew Ference was eating up minutes with aplomb. NHL.com called Hans Jonsson a "Poor Man's Lidstrom." Kasparaitis was playing the best hockey of his career.
It was really the offense that sputtered out more than the defense against New Jersey, with their five man neutral zone trap in all its glory. We scored seven goals in five games, zero from Jagr, zero from Mario, one from Lang, one from Kovalev. For such a top heavy team, we weren't beating anyone with only 2 goals from four of our top six.
In the five game series, the Pens shot totals were 15, 23, 20, 21, 20. Just couldn't break down the trap.
Hans Jonsson is the opposite of Lidstrom. He is the single worst dman to ever play for the Pens and calling him anything else is revisionist history.
We were so weak at D he passed as a legitimate NHL player and wasn't.