Stanley Cup playoff picks

In the West, it's what you would have expected. In the East, it's what you least would have expected. The top seeds in the West, the last two seeds in the East. That's your conference finals in the NHL.

The Sharks have been the best regular season team in the NHL since the lockout. They have been the biggest postseason gaggers of this decade, dating back to before the lockout. They finally are in the conference final for the first time since the lockout and second time this decade. They face the Blackhawks who are in their second straight conference final. I really am impressed with the Blackhawks. I don't know what I think about the Sharks.

Yes, San Jose is talented. Probably more talented than the Blackhawks. But the history of postseason failings among core Sharks players still worries me. Joe Thornton. Patrick Marleau. Dany Heatley. Evgeni Nabokov. How can any of these guys be trusted? About the only players on the team I feel really confident in are Rob Blake, who has been in the league for nearly 20 years, and Joe Pavelski, the rising young second-liner who the Red Wings won't soon forget.

Meanwhile, the Blackhawks have one of my 10 favorite players in the league: Jonathan Toews. (The other nine? Henrik Zetterberg, Drew Doughty, Sidney Crosby, Chris Pronger, Nicklas Lidstrom, David Backes, Zach Parise, Ryan Getzlaf, Ryan Miller.) He reminds me so much of the older Steve Yzerman in the way he leads and the way he provides offensive punch. Does he have a weakness? If so, I'm not sure what it is. And Toews has help up front in Patrick Kane and Marian Hossa (and has the NHL officially ruled that Hossa will lose the Stanley Cup Final ever year yet?). But what I really like about the Blackhawks are their puck-moving defensemen. As a veteran watcher of Joel Quenneville, I can tell you with 100% confidence that the key to his teams are the ability of his defensemen to move the puck up the ice and spring the transition game. In Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook, Niklas Hjalmarsson, Brian Campbell and Brent Sopel, no team in the league except maybe Detroit has a better group of puck-moving defensemen. So long as Antti Niemi holds up in goal, I don't see how Chicago is the lesser of the two teams. I'll take Chicago in six games.

I'm completely confounded on the East. On the one hand, part of me thinks the hockey gods have decided the time has come for the Canadiens to finally return to glory (like the Celtics in 2008 or the Yankees in 1996). On the other hand, maybe it's the Flyers that are a team of destiny after rallying from a three-game deficit and a 3-0 hole in Game 7 to beat the Bruins. All of rememeber the 2004 Boston Red Sox. They rallied from their 3-0 series deficit to win four in a row and shock the Yankees, then destroyed the Cardinals in the World Series. Could the Flyers ride that same kind of momentum?

I don't know. I have to believe the injuries are going to catch up to the Flyers at some point. How much longer can they survive without a top-level player like Jeff Carter? Without the pesky and pugnacious Ian Laperriere? With Michael Leighton in goal? I don't know. But I also know that I don't want to bet against them right now.

Gone largely unnoticed throughout these playoffs is how incredibly well Chris Pronger is playing, like he decided the time has come to reassert himself as the best defenseman in the league (whether he actually is or not). I won't dispute the notion that Pronger has had some bad playoff years in which he mean streak got the better of him and led to a parade of penalties (and injuries, like in 2002 when he tried to take a retaliatory shot at Steve Yzerman and ended up suffering a serious knee injury in the process, one that knocked him out for the rest of the playoffs). But I also know that in the 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2006 and 2009 playoffs he was the best defenseman in the postseason (and he won the Cup in 2007). And he's playing at that level in 2010. Anyone that doubted the wisdom of the deal Philadelphia gave to Pronger after the ransom they sent to Anaheim to acquire him can shutup now. I'm convinced that, after his 2000 Blues won the Presidents' Trophy with Pronger having the best regular season I can ever remember a defenseman having (he was the league MVP that year), Pronger decided that the regular season really doesn't mean that much and decided to conserve his energy for the playoffs. And his playoff performances have largely bore that out.

The Flyers also have a good mix of forwards. I really like Mike Richards. Danny Briere has thrived in a more free-wheeling NHL. Dan Carcillo, Claude Giroux, Ville Leino and James van Riemsdyk are the kinds of role players champions are built on. Simon Gagne is back.

Then there are the Canadiens. I'm not sure what I like about them. Actually, I take that back. I know that there are three things I like about them: Hal Gill, whose ridiculous size and reach has a way of throwing elite forwards off their game (Gill used to completely confound Jaromir Jagr when Jagr was the best offensive player in the world 10 years ago, dominated Sidney Crosby against Pittsburgh and was a thorn in Detroit's offense in last season's Stanley Cup Final). PK Subban, who was called up from the minors during the playoffs and immediately became Montreal's best defenseman. I'm not sure what the 20-year-old's ceiling is but I know it's really high. I don't think the league has ever had a defenseman like him, one that can carry the puck up ice with speed and have the hands to spring a transition game while also having the body type to be a physical force in his own end. It's like he should be Pronger, only with the ability of Scott Niedermayer or Sandis Ozolinsh to carry the puck. And, of course, Jaroslav Halak. Everyone can fashionably point out to the weaknesses of the Penguins and Capitals in why they lost to the Canadiens (something I even did, largely because they were true) but it has to be noted that anything less than a super-human effort from Halak would have the Habs on the golf course right now. In Montreal's eight playoff wins, seven times Halak was the reason they won (and in the eighth, Game 7 against Pittsburgh, he destroyed the Penguins momentum after they righted themselves and seemed on the verge of a comeback).

Back in the 1990s, a new hockey term was created for teams that completely dominated in the offensive end, yet lost because of incredible goaltending: it's called being "Haseked," after Dominik Hasek. Well, the Capitals and Penguins were both Haseked by Halak, or Halaked, if you will.

How many playoff series can a team ride such incredible goaltending to victory? I don't know. But because of the injuries the Flyers have, I can't help but think that Halak has one more miracle in him. And while Leighton was able to slow down the Bruins for much of Games 6 and 7 in the previous round, Montreal has far more firepower than does Boston, led by the incredible postseason Michael Cammelleri is having.

I'm picking the Habs. In seven.