Yes. I do.
I also look around the league and see teams like Tampa, Colorado and Edmonton’s best players show up regardless of where the game is played and wonder why our top guys can’t do that. Maybe I’m expecting too much.
Tampa is the 2-time defending Cup champion.
Both Colorado and Edmonton have just gotten a major monkey off of their back after having spent years hearing about how they can’t get over the hump. We’ve made the Conference Finals in the last few years. They haven’t.
In 2019, Tampa could’ve easily looked at us and said “why are Carolina’s players playing with swagger and killer instinct while we got swept in the first round?”
It’s always easier to look at a team having more success than you in the playoffs in a given year and say they’ve got more “whatever” (guts, winning mentality, etc.), but in reality this is a relatively short tournament with a lot of variance where the better team doesn’t always win, lots of players that are great play poorly, and lots of players that suck play great. Every fanbase that doesn’t win the Cup blames it on intangibles at some level, but at least 2 of those 3 teams you mentioned aren’t going to win the Cup, and then they’ll complain about how their own players don’t show up.