Stanley Cup Final: Tampa Bay Lightning vs. Montreal Canadiens
- Thread starter CarltonTheBear
- Start date
TheMightyOdin
New member
Montreal can fly home in their pumpkin now.
ZBBM
Well-known member
Zee said:
Now now, let us be gracious. Even though their team fell just short, I am sure Habs fans will cherish this magical post-season forever. The many thrilling victories they posted, the iron discipline with which they played, and above all the honor and respect they embodied are a new, fitting chapter to the legend that is the Montreal Canadiens. Then too, consider that their goalie has gained valuable experience from this admittedly disappointing, one might even say heart-breaking, outcome in the final, and next year, being one year older and wiser, perhaps he will use this defeat to continue to hone his craft and get this world-belov?d team back into a position where they can compete for the sacred chalice again. And finally, to all of us who laughed at the Habs GM, well I guess he showed US who is boss. Indeed, I think it was a Canadiens legend, Ken Dryden ? as intellectual a man as ever who donned a Habs sweater ? who once summed things up, using the universal language of mathematics, in a simple equation:
2 = 31
Kin
Active member
Well, I guess I'm glad that the cap circumventing Florida team that nobody can replicate without wildly underpaying their stars beat the garbage mediocre team that didn't have any stars and counterpunched their way past more entertaining teams.
Truly, this was the perfect cup final for all you dingdongs who cheered on the owners during the last two CBAs. Parity, yay!
Truly, this was the perfect cup final for all you dingdongs who cheered on the owners during the last two CBAs. Parity, yay!
4EVRLEAFAN
Member
Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate said:
Gracious my rear end, this is hockey. The Habs SUCK!!! ;D
Kin
Active member
It really is wild to me how many members of the hockey press, in their never ending attempts to try to get people to like the sport, are presenting the Kucherov thing as some adversity the Lightning had to overcome and not a huge advantage they had in terms of how good they were for the playoffs.
ZBBM
Well-known member
Nik said:
I don't think anything will change so long as Bettman hangs on, but they really need to order the refs to call the playoffs the same way they do the regular season. Parity ought to imply consistency in how the game is ruled, not a marching order to neutralize talent differences.
bustaheims
Well-known member
Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate said:
Inconsistent officiating standards is definitely a contributing factor, but it's only part of the story. The way the NHL negotiated the cap has a much larger impact. Without any mechanisms to make it easier for teams to retain talent (like the various exception/designations available in the NFL and the NBA), the difference between middle of the pack teams and top teams is narrowing, and, in a playoff series, with everything else that changes from the regular season to the playoffs, it's not a surprise we've seen an uptick in Cinderella runs in the cap era.
L K
Well-known member
Nik said:
Yeah....Kucherov adversity would be he gets injured on Game 1 of the season and you play without him all year. They got to stack their team with his injury. He skated for two bloody months before the playoffs.
They have 85M in committed money right now for 11 forwards, 5 defensemen and 1 goaltender. Woe is them. Let's ignore the 7.5M in LTIR from Gaborik and Nilsson because they were never going to play for the team. They were still 9.5M in the plus with Kucherov all year.
Tampa's open night roster:
Forwards: Cirelli, Coleman, Goodrow, Gourde, Joseph, Killorn, Maroon, Palat, Point, Stamkos, Stephens, Volkov
Defense: Cernak, Foote, Hedman, McDonagh, Ruuta, Sergachev
Goalie: Vasilevskiy, McElhinney
Scratched: Borgman, Nieves
9.5M alone forces them give up some combination of:
Cirelli (4.8M) + Johnson (5M)
or Killorn + Johnson + Coleman (and then add a league minimum guy)
Oh and then Steven Stamkos went on LTIR April 8 that let them add David Savard while he came back for Game 1 of the playoffs.
How anyone thinks Tampa overcame anything is deluding themselves because they got the benefit of Kucherov's cap hit to keep their team stacked.
Kin
Active member
Beyond all that, it's crazy how many people won't even acknowledge that the way it all just worked out for Tampa was to their advantage.
I'm not dragging them for it, everyone tries to game the system. But to pretend like they weren't artificially better than everyone else is just stupid.
I'm not dragging them for it, everyone tries to game the system. But to pretend like they weren't artificially better than everyone else is just stupid.
OldTimeHockey
Active member
Significantly Insignificant said:
This is so great.