Yes the LA/EDM was weird, it felt like the first four games the wrong team won all of them yet that evened out. LA's PK and goaltending were saucy most of the season and that's a good way to waste 82+ games of wear and tear on your guys. EDM is still deeply flawed but they sure looked the part whenever they had a power play. Goaltending is still not there, Darnell Nurse makes double what he should and let's face it when you've got two guys making over 1/4 the salary ceiling, you can't waste money elsewhere. They can have maybe *one* bad contract and they've got more than that. You look at it, they've got the two best players in the world and they managed to get only as far as the Seattle Kraken, a second-year team without a big name to speak of. I knew Seattle would be a tough out and that Colorado was a little out of sorts, but I was still pretty surprised, even more so than Florida's bouncing of the Bruins.

Dallas was a team that no one loved except me I honestly thought they would win the West. They had the most bankable goaltending and two of the most clutch players in the league with Pavs and Miro. They got close. In the end, look, doing it for four rounds is more than luck, but Vegas, statistically was well out-resulting its performance through most of the run. Good for them though, and loved how Kessel had some words for the folks back in Toronto afterward. Mark Stone is such a stud and doesn't get his due, I was happy for him among others, including the Conn Smythe winner Marchessault. He is a big-game, big-moment player but would have been overlooked as such without this honor. He is so. fucking. competitive. But he's also one of the friendliest and most fun-loving guys in the league.

Eastern Conference, I mean what can you say, it pretty much started and ended with the Panthers. The razor's edge shit in the first two rounds was necessary and pretty consistent. But to win a conference series with four one-goal games, including two OT matches (one that went to FOUR overtimes), that's just insane. I bet Rod Brind'Amour probably swore more in one week than a whole platoon did across the span of the Vietnam War, it just defied logic that the series wasn't 2-2 and headed the distance. But the Panthers were no ordinary wild card and that's why I was dying to see them make it over the low-ceiling Pens, and man did the Panthers make good on that. They have two top-10 guys and they were without some key guys at times this year, no way should they have been a bubble team with that roster.