But when you have no expectations at all, storylines fall apart.
I guess some folks still have some element of surprise, and that's why they enjoy it. That's fine. Enjoyment from any form of entertainment is subjective. For me personally, I lost that long ago with the NHL.
Not once when Columbus was destroying Tampa did I think "this is amazing." I thought "welp, here's the NHL doing NHL things again."
The NHL wasn't holding Columbus's sticks and manually moving their legs. This is the point of the sport. Of any sport. Why even play the game if we're supposed to stick to expected results? I find the prospect of seeing how far teams like Columbus and Colorado can take their respective runs after toppling the Conference winners far more compelling than watching a historic team streamrolling their way to an expected Stanley Cup victory.
There's still plenty of storylines to engage in.
-Can San Jose win Jumbo Joe a cup before his legs give out, finally shake the playoff choker reputation, and finally join the Ducks and Kings as Californian champions?
-Can Vegas win a cup in their second year in existence and bring the hammer down on all those who thought the Vegas expansion would be a miserable and immediate failure? Could Nikita Gusev make a late appearance in the Finals and have a stellar debut propelling Vegas at least back to the conference finals?
-Can Nate MacKinnon drag his team into the Finals and show the hockey world that the Colorado rebuild is over? Can the rest of the Avalanche roster start stepping up and play an even more complete game to make an improbable run to the cup out of a wild card spot?
-Can St. Louis go on a dominant run to complete a massive turnaround that started from the league cellar at one point this year.
-Can Tortorella really push through this CBJ roster with Panarin and Bobrovsky departures seemingly imminent?
-Can Carolina, a team very often ignored and forgotten do damage with a young and inexperienced roster to make an improbable return to the Finals for the first time in 13 years?
-Can Washington repeat as Stanley Cup champions? Can they even get past this upstart Carolina team? Will their be an ironic series against the Trotz coached Islanders and how would that go?
-Can NYI go further than they ever had without John Tavares? Will the Islanders square off against the Leafs to bring down the waterfall of boos on JT's head?
-Can Toronto shake off the demons of the past by closing out their series against the Bruins or will history repeat itself? If Toronto goes through, can their defense sustain them all the way to a championship? If Boston goes through can they make a championship triple play for the city.
I don't really care about the Predators, Stars, or Jets and I'm tired of this hypothesizing but the point is all of these things could realistically happen and all of them are at least cognizable and noteworthy storylines. Honestly, this isn't a personal attack, but I cannot understand how the death of the Tampa, Calgary, and Pittsburgh storylines is a bad thing for the story of these playoffs to anyone but people who usually go for teams like the Golden State Warriors, Barcelona FC, and the New England Patriots. The absence of the best performing teams and a team with three championships in a decade does not mean the well of storylines has gone dry.