Steve Valliquette

My point here is that I think it would have been really tough, really, really hard for Freddie Anderson to be the second guy to get the cup.

It would be hard to get over that.

It would be.

Yeah, there's really two parts to that one.

I think the first part, Kipper, I of course had my rooting interest with Vegas.

That's where my rooting interest was because of style of play.

Carolina had failed four times in the Eastern Conference Final, twice against the New York Rangers in the last six years.

So I saw them really closely.

The one issue I had with them was just style of play as in...

shooting low-danger shots, recovering pucks, and the amount of energy that that requires, I don't see them going to this final if, imagine the Eastern Conference final had a featured Carolina-Florida series that went seven, and Florida takes a big bite out of them.

Are they a different team against Vegas in the final?

Certainly they are.

And so I wonder if their style of play requires them to be able to get through rounds one and two without a loss.

and then be able to only have three losses and win a Stanley Cup because they didn't go long in their early series against Ottawa.

And Philadelphia was pretty much a tap-in.

I mean, I saw Philadelphia a lot this year.

They didn't seem like a playoff team to me when I was covering them in March.

They came out of nowhere to make the playoffs late.

So I wonder if what we're going to see in the future will reflect anything that I'm used to seeing in the past.

What I'm used to seeing is...