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The Stanley Cup Final, year in and year out, is bittersweet.
It’s the final chapter of a nine-month journey for 30 teams that eventually turned to 16, then down to eight, then to four, and now to two. The fortunate two this year are the Chicago Blackhawks and Tampa Bay Lightning, two of the league’s more entertaining clubs. Only one will emerge, too. It’s the best feeling in the world for one city, and the lowest of lows for another.
You’ve read a billion prediction blogs by now, I’m sure. But for me, this one’s nearly impossible to figure out. And I think that means great things for this fourth-round finale. I’ve gone with the Blackhawks for three rounds now, and it seems as if there’s a new typical-but-then-unsung hero from Chicago every time you think you’ve figured out Chicago’s best. And then there’s the Lightning, a team I’ve picked against in two Game 7s now, so yeah, they’re slowly turning me (forcing me) into a believer.
This one’s just too close to call for me, really. But I’ll predict something: I think this will go down as one of the better Finals in recent years. And yeah, I know what you’re asking next: Well, what’s the best Stanley Cup in ‘recent years’? Well, firstly, let’s consider ‘recent’ the last eight years.
To get thing started, let’s put the 2007 Final between the Anaheim Ducks and Ottawa Senators dead last. When the most exciting thing to happen involves an angry Daniel Alfredsson intentionally shooting a puck at somebody and an Ottawa defenseman putting the puck in his own net, your Cup was bad.
Behind ‘07, I can’t help but feel that the 2012 Stanley Cup damn near killed hockey. It was a six-game series, so it wasn’t necessarily a meaningless affair, but my god did it feel that way. You knew the Los Angeles Kings were going to ultimately beat the New Jersey Devils. You just knew it. The Kings pasted the competition -- the one, two, and three seeds in the West mind you -- and had such a ridiculous advantage in every lineup department. It didn’t hurt that LA goaltender Jonathan Quick channeled his inner 2011 Tim Thomas with an absurd postseason run, either.
In sixth, I’ll go with the 2008 showdown between the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins. It felt like boys against men for the first two games of the series (it sorta was looking back on it), and while Petr Sykora and the Pens won that incredible Game 5 in triple-overtime, you sorta had a feeling this was Detroit’s the whole way. And such proved to be the case. (That Wings club was incredible, by the way.)
I’ll put last year’s Kings-NY Rangers round-four battle in the five-spot here, simply ‘cause of its length. I genuinely enjoyed this series, but again, New York’s run was over three games in. It was a bummer, too, ‘cause I’m not sure that the NHL could have asked for a better sequel to 2013’s Final than one featuring New York and Los Angeles, the two biggest cities in America in terms of glitz and glam. The deciding game did feature one of the best overtimes I’ve ever witnessed though, so thumbs up there.
Four goes to the 2013 Final between the Blackhawks and Boston Bruins. I swear to you, that marathon Game 1 took actual years off my life. (Thanks for missing a wide open net, Kaspars Daugavins.) That Game 4 didn’t help. And I still refuse to finish anything in 17 seconds. I view as a sign of awful luck. I will say, however, that this series will always have a special place in my heart ‘cause it was the first time that I saw the Cup won in real life. There’s something that was just so incredible being on the ice as Corey Crawford hugged and cried with his parents moments after winning hockey’s ultimate prize.
Three? I’ll go with the ‘09 rematch between the Wings and Pens. This was before the whole, “Wow, the Penguins are kinda garbage… realization I had -- I’m sorry, Pittsburgh, but Mario Lemieux and Matt Cooke drove me nuts for a quick three-year, four-year stretch there (and how the hell did you guys always seem to trade garbage for legitimate assets every trade deadline?) -- and I’ll admit that I was rooting for them hard. Always wanted to see Sidney Crosby, inarguably one of the league’s all time greats, get his Stanley Cup, and more importantly wanted to see Marian Hossa’s streak continue.
In the two hole, I’ll take the 2010 showdown between the Blackhawks and Philadelphia Flyers. Both of these teams held spots close to my heart, too. I wore No. 88 in youth sports when I could in honor of Eric Lindros, and Mark Recchi is/was the favorite player from my youth. And the Crazy Eights line! And the ‘Hawks… well, they’re the ‘Hawks! Best logo in sports, and my go-to team in NHL video games because of their logo. They also had a guy named Tyler Arnason for a quick minute there, and for a Tyler Anderson, that was kinda cool. (Hey, leave me alone, I was like, 10.) But I digress…
This series simply got better with time, too. It was a coming of age for Claude Giroux, and Chicago’s Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, and as time went on, I found my heart way too conflicted. I didn’t want to see Philadelphia win at the start, but when Scott Hartnell scored that late-period goal in Game 6, I found myself flipped and rooting for the Flyers. They were a team you wanted to hate but just couldn’t. An in-his-prime Chris Pronger was an absolute monster. Mike Richards and Jeff Carter were gamers, and guys like Danny Briere and Simon Gagne were entirely too clutch for their own good. They had that classic Flyers swagger you always read about. And they were a wild bunch. Good and bad.
But at No. 1, and I don’t care how this rubs people, I have to go with 2011’s seven-game war between the Bruins and Vancouver Canucks as the best Stanley Cup Final of this era. This was a legitimately hateful series. It had literally everything, too. Absolutely devastating one-goal losses for the Bruins in Vancouver, and complete Vancouver beatdowns in every sense of the term in Boston. The star of Boston’s postseason run, Nathan Horton, was absolutely plastered with a cheapshot and taken out of the series in Game 3. Roberto Luongo called goals Thomas surrendered ‘easy saves’ for him, only to get shelled for three against in his next game. This Final was basically a movie, really.
And if you ask people in Boston, it could not have had a better ending.
I think this will come close though. You have two of the league's best talents going head to head in Kane and Steven Stamkos. Goals should be aplenty, too. The feisty roleplayers won't wait too long to get involved for either side, and Chicago has a legacy of sorts at stake.
(By the way, I’ll take the Blackhawks over Tampa Bay in six games.)
Ty Anderson has been covering the Boston Bruins for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, is a member of the Pro Hockey Writers Association's Boston Chapter, and can be contacted on Twitter, or emailed at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com