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Stanley Cup Finals: Offensive Depth |
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Both the Chicago Blackhawks and Philadelphia Flyers have numerous ways of making opposing teams pay for their mistakes. Chicago boasted six 20-plus goal scorers this season, while Philly had 10 double-digit goal scorers.
With all the attention that understandably gets paid to Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, Marian Hossa, defenseman Duncan Keith and, for his playoff heroics so far, Dustin Byfuglien, the Chicago player who may scare me the most is Patrick Sharp. Two reasons: Ex-Flyers often seem to do well against the club (think Ruslan Fedotenko or Vaclav Prospal), and Sharp's opportunistic counterattacks are of the type that the Flyers have struggled with at times this season, particularly when they are on the powerplay. Meanwhile Kris Versteeg is one of those players who rarely gets mentioned on pregame shows but can burn you if you ignore him.
For the Flyers, it will be very important to continue getting contributions from Claude Giroux, one of Scott Hartnell or James Van Riemsdyk, and a couple goals from the defense. If that's the case, Chicago's task defensively becomes much more difficult than merely focusing on containing Mike Richards' line with Simon Gagne and Jeff Carter.
There is no such thing as an uncontainable player or line. In many cases where a star player gets criticized for modest production in a series, it's not a matter of what he isn't doing so much as the opposing defense taking away his operating room and the star player's teammates not being able to force the opposition to focus elsewhere.
That said, when it comes to crunch time, a team's best players need to be their best players. If Richards, Carter, Gagne, Briere and Chris Pronger can outshine Kane, Toews, Hossa and and company, the Flyers will win the series. If they get outplayed, forget the parade.
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Today's
at Versus.com looks at the question of what, exactly, defines a "Stanley Cup goalie".
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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