Consider me apart of the "we won but the effort was disturbing" crowd.
I really do feel that fans look a little too much into when teams reach their peak level of play. How often have you heard "Oh, they're peaking at the right/wrong time" this season alone? Throughout the course of an 82 game season you really expect the level of effort from a team to fluctuate, it is only natural. While you do want the players to enter the playoffs with the confidence that they have been playing their best hockey, people tend to put too much emphasis on it.
A team going into the playoffs is going to experience a series of momentum shifts; both from game to game and series to series. Rarely does a team come into the playoffs and tear apart every opponent. You cannot put a lot of stock into a small string of very good (or very bad) games. It's all about the bigger picture. How well does the team perform at their absolute best and worst? On average, how high is their level of play? When you're expecting a long run, it's important to understand that they are likely to play at both ends of the spectrum throughout the run. Hockey is a mental game just as much as it is a physical one, especially in the playoffs.
In my eyes, after how amazing this team has played over the past forty or so games, it's hard for me to begin to doubt their ability when the playoffs arrive. If they continue to show this level of effort until the end of the season, maybe I'll be singing a different tune. But, as of now, looking at the bigger picture tells me that this is an incredibly good team that is a Stanley Cup contender.
