Ladies and gentlemen, the NHL has a true Stanley Cup contender. The Anaheim Ducks should change their name back to The Anaheim Mighty Ducks, because they are the hottest team in hockey right now. No other team in the NHL has dominated their playoff run quite like Anaheim has. The argument could be made that the Tampa Bay Lightning are the hottest team, but the two straight games they dropped to Montreal before their game seven win showed a lot of holes. The Calgary Flames are a very good hockey team, a very young team maybe, but a very solid team with great veteran defense. The Anaheim Ducks absolutely manhandled Calgary four games to one.
You see a lot of sweeps and four to one series wins during the first round of the payoffs, but the later series are supposed to get more competitive. So when you have a team on a roll like the Ducks are, you know you have a true contender for Lord Stanley. Yes I know that the Chicago Blackhawks just swept the Minnesota Wild in the second round as well, but Minnesota has about one line that produces a great majority of their offense. Not to mention that Chicago had a hard time with Nashville in the first round, a round that Anaheim absolutely dominated a big physical team in the Winnipeg Jets. I am also very interested to see how Patrick Kane holds up against a team as physical as Anaheim. Calgary is a physical team as well, and when you have to sit your best player in Johnny Gaudreau for the entire third period because his play was affected by the amount of hits he was taking you know the team you are playing means business.
Now lets examine the current goaltending situation with both Anaheim and Chicago. The Anaheim Ducks are in a better goaltending situation as Frederik Anderson is hot, and has been their go-to guy since day one. And then we have Corey Crawford, a great goalie who has split time with Scott Darling: A goalie who some people think is an overall better goaltender than Crawford. Crawford is hot as of this moment, but he has not been the reason for Chicago’s success throughout the entire playoffs. Chicago’s success has come from their strong leadership and great systems play. Lets see if that holds up once the Anaheim Ducks begin their relentless, hard-hitting attack. Not only do I like Anaheim to take the series against Chicago, I like Anaheim to win the Stanley Cup. “Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, Mr. Ducksworth.”
