you gotta at some point give Carolina credit. I mean they won the cup. And not only that they only lost 3 game and in nearly all of their games they let in 2 or less goals outside of game 1 against the habs and 2 games against Vegas.
Carolina was a good team that won the east and had a beast of a playoffs sweeping 2 series with 10 GA, then winning the ECF in 5 with only allowing 1 goal in 120 minutes of hockey in the last 2 games and then picked up a shut out in the deciding game of the SCF.
they deserve credit it wasn't some fluke that they went 16-3 to win a stanley cup.
And as Brindamour pointed out, they got "lucky" by being almost perfectly healthy through the POs.
The margin for success is very slim. That was a veteran team with a very large history of falling short when it counted. This year things tipped in their favor, as they do every year for every winner.
The hardest part is building a team that can win, and keeping the right pieces together when falling short... which they did.
Yes, they made some additions that worked out...
But last fall, would anyone say Ehlers was an upgrade over Rantanen/Necas?
Ehlers had 21 pts in his previous 43 PO games and was fully healthy in only 3 of 10 previous seasons.
With Carolina - 100 of 100 games, 18pts/18 PO games.
Was Miller & Nikishin a guaranteed upgrade over Burns & Orlov?
They kept a very solid core in place that has grown together through many failures, kept the faith in a coach & culture that until now was known as ECF chokers, and kept tweaking the edges until hitting the payday.
