Well Toronto, NYI, Montreal and Columbus are all in a playoff spot after finishing in the bottom 5 of the NHL overall last year.
All these teams are not "better" necessarily then team like Philly, NJ or Detroit for example, who are perrenial Cup contenders year after year in a 82 game season.
A 48 game season is a sprint and so some of these teams are simply currently involved in the playoffs due to a shortened season and being the "fastest" teams to pass > 50 points, and having the season cut short preventing others now from passing them.
We all know its harder to sustain success over a longer period than it is to gain success over a shorter one. (larger the sample\data set ie more games played the more accurate the true results become).
Now this is not to take anything away from our Leafs, who earned their spot on merit of the rules as set out by this lockout shortened season.
Why do you keep making contrarian points, only to state in the end that the Leafs earned their spot?
All you're really doing is wasting your own time. I feel like you almost want to discredit the team, but then again you and ULF have a favourite pastime of playing Devil's Advocate, though ULF is more blatant since he leaves out the extra poetic stuff.
At the end of the day, everyone plays 48 games. You're completely disregarding the mental aspect; in a regular 82 game season, a lot of teams would still have the mentality that they have "time to figure it out" by game 40 and wouldn't necessarily play to their top abilities game in and game out. In a 48 game season, everyone knows there's only 48 games of opportunity, therefore the teams that are truly the best make sure they never take their foot off the pedal and drive through these 48 games.
The teams that you listed have serious flaws. Philly has one of the worst defensive corps in the league, as well as terrible goaltending. A skilled offense is useless if both D AND goaltending are poor, you need at least one of those to be good.
NJ has no scoring depth, Kovalchuk is out with injury and without Parise they're pretty bare. All they have is an aging Elias. Zajac is underperforming without Parise, Clarkson had a career year where his shooting % was an anomaly, and Henrique came off a successful rookie season, heading into a sophomore season with lofty expectations, no surprise he's slumped. Other than that they just have regular depth players.
Their D is also average and an aging Brodeur has had the worst season of his career.
Detroit has a decent roster, but losing Lidstrom left a huge void in terms of leadership and stability, and they no longer have an anchor on their back end. Nik Kronwall is a huge downgrade as a #1 d-man from Lidstrom, they don't have a #1 guy and it's hurting them badly. Losing both Lidstrom and Rafalski in 2 years has gutted the defense. Detroit is also a pretty soft team. They're weak on the wings, with only Filp and Franzen as true top six guys, though Franzen is getting up there in age too. They do have Nyquist who should be good soon, and Brunner who has been providing serviceable offense. Jimmy Howard is a bit inconsistent but he's been good. From what I've gathered from Red Wing fans is that Babcock has been making a lot of questionable decisions this year and a lot of fans are angry with him over that.
The only team really underachieving is Detroit I would say, while Philly and NJ are both playing with serious holes in their line-up, and as expected they're struggling.
