Dominic Sramaty

Even rounds one and round two against Utah and Anaheim, I know I'm very high on those two teams.

Respectively, but they look like the slower team and at times look like they were in trouble.

West final, that's probably what made it more surprising than the actual sweep itself, is that they look just as fast, if not faster at times, than Colorado, who's obviously a fast team in their own right.

So I think they're prepared for it.

You know, in previous seasons, as your listeners know, I've been very skeptical of the Hurricanes offense this time of year.

And I think if that were the case heading into this series, it would be a nightmare for them because we just saw Vegas is going to be very comfortable giving you zone time, losing a shot battle, but not giving up chances and then countering and being very efficient in doing so.

Yeah, I mean, things have lined up incredibly nicely for them.

Obviously, the first two matchups going through the Metro and then –

Montreal being the team to meet them in the East Final, Colorado bowing out before they could get to a potential Stanley Cup Final.

I guess my one pushback on that would be we saw last year's team that made the Conference Finals had the flexibility and assets to go out and trade for Keiondre Miller, Cy and Nikolai Ehlers.

I'm not sure if those moves are necessarily available for them this offseason, but we know they're going to be creative and aggressive, and they have the means to once again add players to this team.

So I think the situation around them is going to be much more difficult next season.

But in a weird way, I expect this hurricane to seem to be even better heading into next year.

So I think that's going to make for a really interesting path through the East as a general.

I think it's a combination of both, certainly.

I mean, listen...

They swept both, so it's easy to look back on it in hindsight and be like, man, those were cupcake matches.

But as we talked about right off the hop, Ottawa was like the third or fourth most likely team to come out of the East, even though they were the eighth seed and they were one of the best teams post-Olympics.

And then the Flyers under Rick Tockett snuck into the playoffs because of how good they were, especially defensively down the stretch.

And so Carolina made quick work of them, but I don't think they were necessarily as easy of opponents for them as it might have seemed afterwards.