Stanley Cup Playoff Sweet Victories

It has been a fun ride through the first two rounds of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. As we now get closer to the conference finals, there's two teams that are advancing that have had a lot to prove this year. One is an expansion team that nobody really expected to make this much noise, while the other has been trying to shake a piano off its back in the post season for a long time now. Both got it done in the second round and turned quite a few heads doing it.

The biggest story right now has to be the Washington Capitals. It has been twenty years since the Capitals had been able to reach the Eastern Conference Finals, something that has been a thorn in the side of the franchise ever since. Last time Washington was back in the Eastern Conference Finals, the average Cost of new house was $129,300.00, the average Income per year was $38,100.00, while the average Monthly Rent was $619.00. Cost of a gallon of Gas was $1.15, while the average cost of new car was $17,200.00. A postage stamp cost you 32 cents, while a loaf of Bread was $1.26, a Dozen Eggs cost 88 cents and Titanic hit theaters. This series not only marks the first conference finals appearance since 1998, its the 2nd time in 11 tries that the Caps have beaten the Pens.

A lot had been riding on Washington in this series, as they've been trying for the longest times to get this piano off their backs. In the tenure of Alex Ovechkin in Washington, the 2nd round was the highest level in playoff competition he seemed to be able to attain. Now he's got a shot at a conference title and a birth in the Stanley Cup Finals. That has got to be the biggest knock on the career of one of the greatest Russian scorers in the history of the NHL. Hockey is a team sport, so its not all on one guy, even if that guy is somebody as gifted as Ovechkin. That's where players like Evgeny Kuznetsov come in. He was the hero in overtime of game six. Oh and Washington was not only able to beat the two time defending cup champions to get to the next round, they did it without one of their best playmakers in Nicklas Backstrom. Washington got balanced scoring in the series, getting contributions from everybody and were able to good job to shut down the Penguins best forwards.

It was performances like this that have to feel good for a team and a franchise that has done so many great things during the regular season but just never seemed to get it done in the playoffs. They haven't quite reached the summit just yet, but they have taken a huge step in the right direction.

Then there's the upstart Vegas Golden Knights, who've been shattering every expansion record in the book this year. Its really amazing to consider that the Golden Knights have won more playoff series in the last month then a team like the New York Islanders have won in the last 25 years. Vegas has really taken a city by storm with their exciting brand of hockey Its a chance to expand a sport into what was considered a non traditional market and bring it to a different kind of crowd. It has worked and worked well.

Vegas has been running with this through a sweep of the Kings then beating the Sharks in six games. The funny thing is, the average game attendance at T-Mobile Arena is now 18,042. What's happened in Vegas goes to show that the power of the game can do to a community. There were naysayers going into this experiment, but the team has shown that this has, at least in its first year of existence, that the game can work here. This is a group of basically castoffs from other teams who felt these players were expendable. They are out to try and prove everybody that they were wrong.

Nobody has done that more then Marc Andre Fleury. He's 8-2 in the playoffs with a .951 save percentage and a goals against of 1.53, to go along with four shutouts. He, along with William Karlsson are the big reasons why the Golden Knights are here. This is a team who was listed by the books at the beginning of the year as a 200-1 odds to win the Stanley Cup. Now they're four short wins away from making it to the finals. Is this team really this good? The next few years will truly be able to determine that. But for right now, its been a hell of a run. So sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.