Just Beauty

Some quick thoughts because I don't have time to make a proper post until later next week:

• Pretty much everyone overestimated Ottawa and underestimated the Ducks.
• No one fully recognized how sophisticated Carlyle's systems were. He made a very good team look like a throwaway.

• The 'New' NHL is not all about speed and skill. Hockey is more the same today than it ever was; in other words, it's still about a combination of speed, skill, smarts, determination, depth, health and physicality. The best team will always have a combination of all of those attributes.
• Buffalo lacked physicality.
• Ottawa lacked smarts and physicality.
• Detroit lacked health.
• NYR lacked depth.
• SJ lacked determination.
• Vancouver lacked skill/depth.
• Calgary lacked smarts/physicality.

• Scott Niedermayer is the second greatest defenceman ever, the greatest if winning it the only determination.

• Rob Niedermayer went from Special Needs to special teams. He's become a top quality forechecker/shutdown guy who turns it on when it counts most.

• It's unfair to say that Giguere is good only because of his pads. Everyone else has the same opportunity to use those pads, and there isn't anybody else doing it successfully (or at least very few.) It's like saying Kovalchuk has a great shot because he's got a one-piece stick.