Not actual trades, just to get the attention of fans from this years "super teams"

The Knights ran through the Jets, the Oilers, and the Stars before stacking up against the best the east had to offer. A bit odd that the division that was trashed all year as being "garbage" takes the cup home.

I'm not a fan of the knights, but the schadenfreude from all the super teams loosing to Florida, only for Florida to get completely exposed by a Pacific division team in the finals, is delectable.

Well done knights, you got over the hill. Watch out for CBJ next season, I think theyre following the same recipe.

Vegas is a superteam but the argument could be made that they just walked through the easy Pacific division, faced one good team in the West, and then played a team that went through some of the toughest opponents.

Getting out of the East is much harder than getting out of the West.

Anyways since Vegas won, I guess everyone needs to look for their "Eichel trade" and not a "Tkachuk" one. Who can it be? Keller? Schmaltz? Dubois (too much playoff experience)? Ottawa already got Chychrun.

Why bother with “Weak-cific”….just call it, “Pacific”

Stings just the same.

WEAK-CIFIC division, tainted championship. Play in a real division, like the Strongantic or the Bloodbath-etro

Vegas gives me a lot less superteam vibes. Last year to this year they lost Pacioretty and effectively Lehner, and their "Loading up" was Barbashev, Bleuger, San Jose's third goalie, and the ghosts of Jonathan Quick and Phil Kessel, neither of whole they used in any capacity in the playoffs.

They were just built right this year, and wanted to win.

Yeah, Florida had fits with Boston, but they rolled through Toronto and Carolina without much trouble, so I'm dubious about it being much easier to get to the cup finals for the knights.

I mean Vegas actually has a solid team though and Florida was carried by Bob, hell if Lyon doesn't get on a hot streak when he does the Panthers miss the playoffs, the story of Florida this year was two goalies getting hot just at the right time, period.

As a Jets fan I can say unequivocally that stomping the Jets isn't much of an accomplishment though... 🤣

If you look at Toronto series, yeah it was 4-1 but Florida only scored 4 more goals than the Leafs, lot of close games. Similarly with Carolina who they beat in 4 (but essentially played 5 games), they won by 4 goals, which really just means they won 4 games by a goal and that was quite literally the case in the entire Carolina series and for 3/4 wins in Toronto. Their loss was also a 1-goal game. So, it wasn't easy at all.

Vegas against WPG and EDM was pretty much a blowout in every game, win or lose, and the two close one's were a 4-3 and 6-4 game. Against Dallas, they had 4 close games (2 wins) and two blowout wins, overall it was a tight series though with 3 games decided in OT.

The Finals were two tight games and 3 blowouts in favor of Vegas.


The Vegas misfits looked pretty good, too good even which is why Seattle had tighter rules. Since, then they added Eichel, Stone, and Pietrangelo to their squad. 3 superstars+the misfits (who are pretty much all high end players) is enough to just add Barbashev as the big acquisition.

I think the big difference is that in the East it's the goaltenders neutralizing the superstars/super teams while in the West it's other superstar/star forwards and defenseman.

People who say the Pacific is weak or boring just don’t watch enough Pacific division games. Some of the best hockey this playoffs were Western teams:

Seattle, Edmonton, and Vegas were some of the most exciting teams to watch in playoffs.

There’s always a bias with East Coast fans that for some reason hate hockey teams on the West Coast. It makes it so much better when West Coast teams win championships.

Teams should be concerned too about some bright futures:

Anaheim, LA, and Seattle have fantastic futures and it’s only a matter of time until they take over the league.

Vegas was a very good team. I stated that they were in the top wrung of teams before the year started. Them doing well is no surprise. Florida beating Boston, Toronto and Carolina was surprising though. Bobrovski single handily beat the Leafs and Carolina. The Leafs beat up Florida quite badly and somehow lost in 5. Although in saying that, I thought Tampa took it to the Leafs in round one and they deserved to beat the Leafs in round 1.

The best team won the cup. I really thought Vegas had ZERO holes.

this thread is fairly pathetic. if the atlantic division had the worst goal differential overall, the leafs let in 129 more goals than they scored, and detroit or buffalo won the cup over a team that beat the top 3 teams in the west, i wouldn't be gloating about it.

Not sure about "best the east has to offer". Florida got the last playoff spot by a single point. They were the hottest team in the east meaning they were the best *at the time*, but it also meant they had some pretty big deficiencies that could be exploited as well. Make of that what you will.