1) Thomas - The 2011 Bruins were actually one of the weaker teams to win the Stanley Cup by performance. Thomas basically dragged a team that got out-shot and out-chanced a ton to a cup.
2) Malkin - Not as weak a team as the Bruins, but the 2009 Penguins were a flawed top-heavy team. I'm actually not convinced they manage to beat a healthy 2009 Red Wings. However, when the top-heavy part of your team are ****ing monsters, and you get a little luck, you can make it work. Malkin was a machine on this run, just an unstoppable force. Usually you picture skill in hockey as the creativity and ability to navigate around people but Malkin was like 'nah, it's cool, I'll just take a straight line through you, thanks', and he did. Over and over and over, and teams gameplanned for it, and players prepared for it, and nobody could do anything to stop him doing whatever he wanted to do, whenever he wanted to do it.
3) Zetterberg - Not much to say. The best performing player on the best team of the cap era, in a methodical, never-in-doubt cup run. When one of your best offensive players is also your best defensivce player, you're going to win a lot of games. It was crazy (and infuriating, as a fan of a rival team) to watch what was essentially mistake-free, perfect hockey from this guy on this run. The only reason I don't put him above Malkin is because he had more support on a better team. That said, it's telling that on a team with that much talent, there was never really a debate over who deserved the MVP that year (that I can remember anyway.... Wings fans, feel free to correct me here). He was just that good.
4) Keith - Everybody knows about the workload this guy started pulled in 2015, but what was shocking as a fan was that he kept getting better as the minutes increased. He actually had kind of an up-and-down first round, and a solid-if-unspectacular 2nd round. He was playing well and putting up points, but he wasn't running away as a conn smythe favorite or anything. It wasn't until the WCF, when the Blackhawks were basically down to 4 guys, that he started going full god mode and just absolutely taking over games in all three zones. Crushing forechecks before they could even start at the blue-line, transitioning play up the ice under pressure like it was nothing, holding the zone, getting back and establishing a gap when there's no way he should have been able to. He was a living cheat code. By the SCF, nobody on the Blackhawks could touch him.
5) Quick - In a vacuum Quick would probably be higher, but he had the fortune (misfortune?) of playing in front of the ridiculous possession juggernaut that was the Los Angeles Kings. A team, that quite frankly, could have won the cup in front of the 2017-2018 iteration of Scott Darling. Which is not to take away from Quick's performance, he was a machine. His raw numbers are testament to that. It's just that him being a machine wasn't the difference between the Kings winning and losing like it was for the four guys ahead of him. Instead, him being a machine was the difference between them winning, and them being 'ok, this is just unfair for everybody else', going up 3-0 every series type domination. For me, that takes away a little bit, but YMMV.
6) Toews - A rough SCF drags him down pretty significantly (if he kept up his performance, he'd be right there with Zetterberg, since he actually outscored Zetterberg over the same number of games played). Pronger did work on him and Kane, then Q split them, and Toews drew the short straw of going up against Pronger shift-after-shift, and yeah, he struggled. Even with that rough SCF, it's impossible to overlook just how dominant Toews was through 3 rounds of the playoffs. Not merely on the scoreboard, leading all Blackhawks (which he did after the finals as well), but in controlling play through all 3 zones. I remember watching games against Vancouver and San Jose, watching what Toews was doing shift after shift and thinking 'I'm supposed to feel nervous... I'm supposed to be on the edge of my seat.... but they don't have a chance. They can't stop him. They can't even get the puck when he's on the ice.'
7) Crosby - People will probably find this funny since I'm a Blackhawks fan and there's the whole Toews meme out there, but I don't have much time for 'intangibles'. Give my points, give me possession, give me xGF%, give me goal differential, give me WAR, give me all that before you start bleating on about leadership or 'will to win' or what have you. But watching Crosby in the playoffs in 2017, was one of the first times I can remember saying out loud 'holy shit, he's really not going to let them lose this, is he?'. And obviously as far as tangibles go, 27 points in 24 games is nothing to sneeze at. But that 2017 Penguins team was NOT the 2016 team that just murdered their way through the playoffs. This was a team getting out-shot, out-chanced every night it seemed, injured and exhausted, and there was Crosby dragging them through. Not alone, obviously. Malkin, Kessel, Murray and Fleury were all great too. But this is where that weird intangibles thing comes in, along with the points... it really did feel like Crosby was driving the bus, and everybody else was falling in line behind him. If all this sounds crazy, well, I don't blame you. But this is my list, so what the hell.
8) Ovechkin - This is where we wade into that rough 'somebody else on the team deserved it' territory, but I personally don't have a problem with Ovechkin winning it. I personally would have gone with Kuznetsov, but Ovechkin had a solid argument based on goals. I liked that he finally put the completely inaccurate narrative that he didn't show up in the playoffs to rest by showing up big time, in big moments, again and again through these playoffs. Rare was the game he wasn't making a significant impact on the ice, one way or another. After watching that run beginning to end, it's hard to argue he isn't the beating heart of that team.
9) Williams - Justin Williams is a great player. I remember back in 2007 or 2008, wading into the advanced stats community, and even then it was clear that Justin Williams was an undervalued asset that drove possession like a machine, among other talents. I remember wanting the Blackhawks to go after him when he was on the trade block in Carolina for being 'injury prone' or whatever. So this is not, in any way, a rip on him.... but I don't think he should have won the Conn Smythe in 2014. He was good throughout the playoffs and had a GREAT finals... my issue is that, his great finals was the difference between the Kings winning the cup in 5 vs winning it in 6 or 7. His peak performance turned a foregone conclusion into a slightly faster foregone conclusion. I think both Doughty and Kopitar were more deserving in 2014. That isn't to say Williams didn't have a leg to stand on, he just wouldn't have been my choice.
10) Crosby - Similarly to Williams in 2014, I don't think selecting Crosby was a crazy, baseless, off-the-board choice. It's just not the choice I would have made. I would have given it to Kessel or Letang. Crosby was great in 2016, and while his defensive game was always underrated, he definitely stepped it up in 2016, and when you pair a good defensive game with a ****ing elite offensive juggernaut, yeah, you're going to get good results, even when he is facing down the toughest competition. 19 points in 24 games isn't going to light anybody's hair on fire, especially by Crosby standards, but it's hardly garbage. The issue is that there were other guys on the team that fulfilled their role to an even higher degree of excellence. That's not a knock on Crosby, that's just further reason to applaud Kessel and Letang. This felt like a bit of a 'lifetime achievement award' at the time, cause nobody knew they were going to go back the next year and Crosby was going to go Terminator. Look, giving a top 5 player all time an award for anything is never particularly dangerous, chances are he was never so terrible or even mediocre that he didn't deserve to be in the conversation. And Crosby deserved to be in the conversation in 2016... I just don't think he should have won.
11) Ward - He wasn't necessarily the wrong choice, he just wasn't a particularly impressive winner. 2006 was a weird year man.
12) Kane - Unlike Crosby in 2016, Kane didn't deserve to be in the conversation in 2013. That's not a knock on Kane. Because frankly, NOBODY on the Blackhawks deserved to be in the conversation for the Conn Smythe other than Corey Crawford. By Kane's own admission, in his first on-ice interview after receiving the Smythe, he said that Crow got robbed. And he did. Kane won the Conn Smythe based on essentially 5 games. Games 4 and 5 of the WCF and games 4, 5 and 6 of the SCF. Prior to game 4 of the WCF, Kane was in the midst of a 7 game pointless streak and on record describing how he and his dad were watching footage of himself from previous playoff runs, to remind him that he was still a good hockey player. That's how badly he was struggling. When he was put on a line with Toews and Bickell, he exploded and became, unquestionably the most dynamic guy on the ice.... until he was broken up from them to start the Boston series and went invisible again, before being reunited and going off again. Crawford was excellent through 4 rounds of the playoffs that year and deserved the Conn Smythe. He had one bad game in the finals, THAT HE WON, and that was enough for the national media that only started watching in the Finals to decide he was out of the running. In any sane universe, there is no argument for Kane over Crawford. /rant
13) Niedermayer - This one actually pissed me off at the time, because it felt like an honest-to-god 'make-up call', only it was done by media instead of referees. Niedermayer probably deserved the Smythe in 2003, but Giguere was such a hot story the media couldn't help themselves. 4 years later they get a chance to make it up to the guy who they kinda f***ed over, and they take it, even though there were several guys on the team that deserved it just as much if not more (Phalsson being my personal pick given the Pronger suspension, though Pronger and Giguere both had sound arguments too). I want to be clear, I love Niedermayer as a player. He's the guy I repeatedly and proudly compare my favorite player ever, Duncan Keith, to. I'm happy to see his hilariously packed trophy case get even more packed. But this wasn't the year, and more than that, it felt cynical and calculated.
Believe it or not, in 2015 people till the last minute wondered if it would be Keith. He wasn't as slam dunk as the retrospect is.
Williams achievements are in plain sight.
'Last minute' is a stretch. Heading into the SCF, Keith wasn't quite a run-away, but people were taking note of how well he was playing and the workload he had. Kane wasn't the only guy in contention with him, Toews one less point than Kane after 3 rounds and was coming off huge performances in the comeback against Anaheim in the WCF, which boosted him up the polls too.
By puck drop of game 6, nobody on the Blackhawks was close to Keith.
