That team still remains my favorite sports team ever and frankly it's not close. I've still got the Oct 3rd 2005 SI magazine that predicted them to finish 28th out of 30 teams.
I watched damn near every game that season. What occurred to me early on was how resilient they were. At one point early in the season they came back from 2 goals down in Toronto to tie the game, they lost in OT but the next night they blanked a Washington team that featured a rookie Ovechkin and IIRC was off to a good start. They gave Ottawa their first loss of the season, they had an incredible 8-6 home win against the Flyers before Halloween, they had two seperate 9 game winning streaks, they beat Detroit (a battle of the two best teams in the league at the time) on National TV in a game that featured some wild saves from Martin Gerber towards the end. I mean they were clicking and played a style of play that was fun to watch for a league that was coming off a lockout and had "opened up" the offense with the new rules.
The team itself wasn't "stacked" per say, but they were still very good on paper. Ray Whitney, Stillman, Cole, Brindy, Wesley, Wallin, Commodore, Williams, Hedican, Kevyn and Craig Adams etc. These were all dudes who could play. Then there was Eric Staal who had an incredible jump into his 3rd season as a pro after being in the AHL during the lockout. Guy was on fire throughout the whole season and he was must-see TV. 100 point season as a 21 y/o is damn good. The goaltending, everyone thinks of Cam Ward but Martin Gerber did a great job holding down the fort too. Peter Laviolette did a great job balancing that team out and letting them play to their strengths, he also encouraged team bonding days, where they would do obstacle courses or invite the dads on a road trip (still a thing today), one of his quotes was building a team was like building a snowball and letting it roll downhill, it picks up speed and becomes impossible to stop.
I used to get into arguments with people who called them "weak" or whatever but now I just don't really give a shit. It is what it is and those people aren't going to take the memories away from me or my faded, outgrown champions shirt.
I grew up watching ACC sports, the Charlotte Hornets, the Atlanta Braves and the Carolina Panthers. It wasn't until 2002 that I really got into the Canes and they slowly became my favorite team. To this day it still shocks me somewhat that aside from the 1995 Atlanta Braves, the only other major-league champion in this region (GA and the Carolinas) is this rag-tag group of guys from Raleigh (and yes I am aware of the Atlanta MLS team). Most people thought that it would be the Carolina Panthers that would win a Superbowl for the Carolinas, nope, Stanley Cup.