Blackhawks The Favorites As Conference Finals Approach

With Montreal's stunning upset of defending champion Pittsburgh in Game 7 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series, the NHL will have a different Cup winner for the 11th consecutive season. The Penguins are out of the picture and Montreal, Boston and Philadelphia, while inspiring, are long shots even though they've managed to make it this far. That leaves the Western Conference's top two seeds, Chicago and San Jose, poised to battle for a spot in the Stanley Cup FInals and the chance to be the favorite over the Eastern Conference winner.

Will the up-and-coming Blackhawks or the perennially disappointing Sharks emerge from the West to face an underdog Eastern foe? Believe it or not, individual accolades may be the sign that points to Chicago.

How, you ask, can winning the Stanley Cup be about one player and not the team? Well, regardless of the conclusions we come to here, winning the Cup is about every player — from the star defenseman to the checking line winger — contributing for the greater good. That being said, outside of the Penguins last year and the Ducks in 2006-07, no team since the 1999-2000 New Jersey Devils have won the Stanley Cup without having a person win one of the five major regular-season performance awards: Hart, Norris, Selke, Vezina and Adams. In looking at the remaining teams, only Chicago has a player up for one of those awards — Duncan Keith, the frontrunner for the Norris Trophy as the NHL's top defenseman.

Here's a look at all of the Cup winners since 2000-01 and the player (or coach) who took home one of the big five:

• 2000-01: Colorado Avalanche — Joe Sakic, Hart
• 2001-02: Detroit Red Wings — Nicklas Lidstrom, Norris
• 2002-03: New Jersey Devils — Martin Brodeur, Vezina
• 2003-04: Tampa Bay Lightning — Martin St. Louis, Hart; John Tortorella, Adams
• 2005-06: Carolina Hurricanes — Rod Brind`Amour, Selke
• 2006-07: Anaheim Ducks — none
• 2007-08: Detroit Red Wings — Lidstrom, Norris; Pavel Datsyuk, Selke
• 2008-09: Pittsburgh Penguins — none

Those may not be overwhelming odds considering three of the last nine champions have not won one of the major regular season awards, but Anaheim had two of the three Norris finalists in 2006-07 (Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger) and Malkin was a Hart finalist last year. The 1999-2000 Devils did not have a finalist, though Scott Gomez did win the Calder Trophy as the league's top rookie.

The fact is, none of the players or coaches on San Jose, Philadelphia, Boston and Montreal are up for any award unless you want to throw in San Jose's Jed Ortmeyer being up for the Masterton. Even the newly created General Manager of the Year Award had three nominees — Washington's George McPhee, Nashville's David Poile and Phoenix's Don Maloney — who saw their teams ousted in the first round.

Only Keith stands to win one of the big five awards — and because of that I'm saying Chicago is the favorite.

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Speaking of GMs, just how important is good managing to building a Cup conteder? One look at Detroit's year-after-year dominance would suggest the answer is "very." However, only one of the remaining teams has had their GM since before the lockout. (With Boston and Philadelphia set for a decisive Game 7, we're not yet sure which team will be in the final four.)

• Philadelphia's Paul Holmgren took over for Bobby Clarke in 2006 and had a rough patch before bringing the Flyers back into contention. Still, he has not yet solved the goaltending abyss that has cursed the Philly net for decades, and his top two scorers — Mike Richards and Jeff Carter — were drafted by Clarke. That being said, he rebuilt the defense from the ground up with a mix of very good trades and free-agent signings, and his overpayment of Daniel Briere in the 2007 UFA market has at least paid off in the postseason.
  
• In Boston, Peter Chiarelli took over the B's a handful of months before Holmgren took office. Chiarelli made two huge additions when he took the reins: signing Zdeno Chara and Marc Savard to big deals that have paid off handsomely. He also traded one-time Calder winner Andrew Raycroft to Toronto for current starter Tuukka Rask. Despite having to deal with the aftermath of the Joe Thornton trade swung by Mike O'Connell the season before — a deal that doesn't look as lopsided as it once did, but still will go down as one of the more curious moves in Bruins history — Chiarelli reshaped the B's around Chara and has come out roses.
• Stan Bowman will join the GM elite if the Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup. Thing is, he didn't have a whole lot to do with it. Bowman took over for Dave Tallon July 14, 2009, two weeks after free agency opened — Chicago added Marian Hossa on July 1 under Tallon's guidance — and a week after Bowman was forced to overpay several Chicago RFAs — including Kris Versteeg and now-departed Cam Barker — because of a paperwork error. If Bowman can become half the hockey man is father Scotty is, Chicago will be just fine in his hands. But for now, it's Tallon’s and not Bowman’s fingerprints — and year after year of poor play that led to high draft picks — on the roster.
• It's been just a little more than three months since Bob Gainey resigned as the Canadiens’ general manager. An offseason of questions about Gainey's decision to sign several high-priced, undersized forwards coupled with the team's early season struggles eventually led to Gainey's departure after more than six years in Montreal. Surely Gainey has a smile on his face now. Yes, he seemed to favor Carey Price over playoff hero Jaroslav Halak in net, but his "little" big three of Mike Cammalleri, Brian Gionta and Gomez are first, second and fourth, respectively, in Montreal playoff scoring. Pierre Gauthier, Gainey's replacement, acquired Dominic Moore from Florida a few days after taking over for a second-rounder in 2011 — a move that, at the time, was questionable but has proven to be pretty shrewd given his solid performance as a role player — but did little else to shape the surprise Eastern Conference finalists.
• Finally, San Jose's Doug WIlson stood pat with a team that, season after season, failed to have postseason success. Yes, he replaced Patrick Marleau as captain with veteran Rob Blake prior to this season. But the calls to trade Marleau or Thornton because of their playoff failures only prompted Wilson to add even more firepower, acquiring Dany Heatley from Ottawa for a package that included emerging star Milan Michalek — who suffered a serious knee injury this season — and cap nightmare Jonathan Cheechoo. The addition of Manny Malhotra in the offseason turned out being a very good move, and his pre-trade deadline acquisition of veteran Niclas Wallin gave San Jose a player with one Stanley Cup, another Cup Final and an Eastern Conference Finals appearance under his belt. Wilson, who has been the Sharks' GM since 2003, in the only remaining manager to have been with his team prior to the NHL lockout.