The Ducks are Finally Mighty

The Anaheim Ducks went all the way to become Stanley Cup champions because they had the greatest depth of talent. No luck was involved.

The Ducks had three strong forward lines that could all score, Norris Trophy finalists Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger to man the blue-lines and a consistently good goaltender in Jean-Sebastien Giguere.

The Senators were impressive through three rounds but could not cope with the rough-and-tumble Ducks in the final, and it didn’t help that goaltender Ray Emery had his worst performance of the post-season in the final game.

It took the Ducks 14 years to win the Cup. While the Leafs completed the 40th year since winning their last Cup without even making the playoffs. Comparing the Leaf and Duck rosters underscores how far the Leafs need to go to compete. The Ducks have a line made up of 2nd year players (Getzlf, Perry and Penner) that will all be stars while the Leafs best young players (Wellwood, Steen, Stajan) struggled this past season.

Meanwhile, Leaf GM, John Ferguson has been busy locking up Antropov, Ponikarovsky, Tucker, Devereaux, White and soon will add Sundin. So there will be minimal change in the Leaf line up despite the fact that they couldn't even qualify for the playoffs. Once Ferguson signs all his free agents, there will be little cap money left to sign additional help.

So the culture of losing will continue in Toronto. Losers always have an excuse for not winning. When asked by Canadian Press to provide a post-mortem on the Leaf's most-recent season, Ferguson said "We were number one in the league to man games lost to injury in what turned out to be the toughest division in the East and probably in the league to qualify." When asked about the impact Sean Hill's delayed suspension had on the Leafs and Islanders, Ferguson said, "For sure I think we would have made the playoffs."