Like Lemieux, Jagr, Nedved in the 1996 playoffs. My Caps shut down Mario & Mario Jr in the first three games of the first round, up 2-1 in the series and went to 4OT in Game 4, one of the longest games of NHL history. Washington had great checkers on the star duo but third star for the Pens was the hero scoring his 5th goal of the series in the 4th OT to tie up the series. Pittsburgh would ride the trio to Game 7 of the Conference Finals where another great defensive team in Florida were victorious because the trio of Pens had no other offensive support.
Lemieux 11g 27p
Jagr 11g 23 p
Nedved 10g 20p
No other Pens forward had more than 5g, 9p.
(two dmen had double digit assists but only one goal each)
That's a pretty bad example in my opinion. You're totally forgetting that Ron Francis was on that team, and the only reason he was held to nine points in the post-season is because he was hurt and only played 11 of the team's 18 games. In the regular season the scoring went:
Lemieux - 161 P
Jagr - 149
Francis - 119
Nedved - 99
Tomas Sandstrom - 70 (in 58 games)
Sergei Zubov - 66 (in 64 games)
Bryan Smolinski - 64
Markus Naslund - 52 (in 66 games, before being traded to the Canucks)
The gap between 2nd and 3rd was larger than 3rd to 4th, and 4th to 5th. Even so, that team had a lot of offensive firepower on their second line. They didn't have much depth beyond that though, and their defense was putrid.
In that series against the Panthers Nedved, Lemieux and Jagr led the team in scoring with 6, 6 and 5 points respectively. Smolinski and J.J. Daigneault followed with 3 points apiece, and Sandstrom, Zubov, Glen Murray, Dave Roche and Chris Tamer had 2 points each. The only players who played in every game in the series and didn't register a point were defencemen Neil Wilkinson and Dmitri Mironov, and goon François Leroux.
Not that plus-minus is a be-all, end-all, but those "top three stars" were also among the worst on the team in that respect. They provided scoring but they were on the ice for many of the goals against too; again, pointing to the fact the team was not good defensively. The plus-minus leaders in the series were Zubov and Tamer, each +3; Lemieux was -1, Nedved was -2, and Jagr was -3. The worst on the team were Daigneault (-5) and Mironov (-8).