Easily the best. The regular season is 82 games so you get a good idea of how good a team is. A four game series without the best D in the world being healthy doesn’t really show you how strong the team is.
Winning the cup is all luck anyways so you shouldn’t put much weight on it. The presidents’ trophy is easily the most difficult one to win in this sport and winning it by as much as we did is truly something special.
This team might just go down as the greatest NHL team of all time. Doubt we see anything like this ever again with all the parity in the league nowadays.
I thought Tampa had all this great depth. You’re telling me they couldn’t win one game without their #1D? Really? They were the best team in the regular season that this sport has seen in a long time. Surely they could’ve sustained some injury adversity (which every team that goes on a deep run has to deal with).
Simple fact is they choked, and great teams don’t choke like they did. They didn’t lose to a goalie that got ridiculously hot at the right (or wrong if you’re on the losers side) time or even kept the games close. They looked awful outside of the first half of game one, just piss poor play.
A team can lose a major piece and still play well. Tampa pulled one hell of a Jekyll and Hyde routine between the regular season and playoffs