Check out this Blog Article on Ducks Win.

Conn Smythe Trophy winner
santa-claus-leads-water-fowl-to-first Stanley Cup

This is a blog that I found today. Here is an interesting article about the Ducks and how they won the Stanley Cup, doing it the clean way. Yeah ok, the article does have a little bit of a sarcastic tone to it but it the author does hit a lot of the points many of us are talking/thinking about.

So in building hockey teams for the future in the new NHL: here is the 64,000.00 questions. Do you build a team like the Buffalo Sabres who were a small, skilled, fast team whom, I might add, was dismantled by the Senators during the eastern conference championship? Or… Do you built a team like the Ducks who ran the opposition out of the building by having a team of big strong bruising forwards that hit everything in sight and take the puck hard to the net?

Literally, the Ducks ran over many a goaltender to accomplish their goal of winning a Stanley Cup this season. The Ducks also played a rough and tumble brand of hockey that focused on strong goaltending and a trap style defense. The Ducks are a mean and nasty group that lead the league in fighting Majors; oh by the way the Ducks were proud of that fact. I am not saying I don’t admire that style of play, because I do; if that team in question had played a cleaner style of rough and tumble hockey.

I like a good fight like most hockey fans, however, a team can play rough tumble without making questionable plays like hitting to the head and going around trying to take out skilled players by sucker punching them or going after opposing players knees. Frankly, the Ducks were a bunch of thugs, lead by head Thug Brad May. Exhibit (A) was the sucker punch to the head of Kim Johnsson a skilled player for the Wild that never fights and happened to be their best defenseman. Now on the other side of the ice during the playoff Chris Neil is also a dirty hockey player that makes a lot of questionable hits on opposing players and it is only a matter of time before the league clamps down on him as well.

The new NHL done?

After watching how the games were refereed during the Stanley Cup Playoffs, I think there are GM’s that are going to rethink their strategies after watching the Ducks hook, hold and obstruct their way to the Stanley Cup Championship. The Refs in the playoffs were inconsistent and didn’t call the games the way they were during the regular season. This is a fact, the Wild and Ducks series was a testament to that. The Ducks proved that in the new NHL big strong teams could still beat and negate faster skilled skating teams like the Wild. That’s not to say that he Ducks were skilled up front they were, but they weren’t the best. It will be interesting to see how the league drafts the next couple of seasons.