Stanley Cup Final Takeaways
Photo by Lucas Peltier from USA Today Sports
The hockey season is officially over.
That sucks!
It also doesn’t help that a series expected to be a blast (and was fun at times) was over in 5 games.
But regardless, let’s dive into Florida and Vegas’ matchup in the Stanley Cup Final.
Florida Panthers
16 teams make the NHL playoffs. Florida, in overall NHL standings, was 17th.
They were a bottom half team in the league, which makes their incredible run to the Stanley Cup Final so impressive.
But that run was spearheaded by two men.
Matthew Tkachuk was playing like a man possessed, and Sergei Bobrovsky was a brick wall in the net.
It was almost enough.
But they fell crashing back down, with Tkachuk having 3 points in 4 games played (which is still very good but not the pace he was at) while Bobrovsky went from a brick wall to swiss cheese.
Vegas is too talented of a team to make up for that crash back to earth.
It’s a shame. Games 3 and 4 showed that this had the potential to be a hell of a series.
Vegas Golden Knights
Hockey fans don’t like Vegas.
It’s most likely because they joined the league in 2018 and found immediate success, making it all the way to the Stanley Cup Final in their inaugural season, only to lose to the Washington Capitals.
Nobody wants a team that shows up and is immediately great. You gotta take your lumps.
Vegas never has.
But one thing absolutely nobody can deny is that the Vegas Golden Knights front office and management system is one of, if not the best in the NHL.
They made the Cup Final in 2018, and they very easily could have run it back with the same squad.
They didn’t. They understood that those career years were far from a guarantee, and only 6 members of the 2018 squad are still on this roster, and the guys they kept are key members of the squad, like Shea Theodore on defense or Jonathan Marschessault who became the first undrafted Conn Smythe winner since Wayne Gretzky (there’s a fun trivia answer for you).
They made big trades, like adding Mark Stone and Jack Eichel to improve offensively, and signing Alex Pietrangelo in free agency to a big contract.
They dumped Marc-Andre Fleury for Robin Lehner in goal with no drop off, and then switched from Lehner to Adin Hill with no drop off again.
It seems that every single move they have made, even if it’s questionable on the forefront, has paid off.
I get why people don’t like them. It makes total sense to me.
But it’s impossible to deny that their Stanley Cup victory is fully deserved.
Now, they get their first taste at being the hunted…
