The New York Post's Larry Brooks argues that the Chicago Blackhawks may be a dominant team, but are no dynasty:

The Blackhawks are a historically excellent team produced by a model hockey operation. Their three-in-six in the hard cap era is a noteworthy accomplishment. Sharp management is the constant linking this cap era with everything that came before it. That and Scotty Bowman, who keeps finding rings the way kids find Easter eggs.

But the rush to canonize these Blackhawks and include them with the dynastic Canadiens, Islanders and Oilers is foolish. Three-in-six is something, all right, but it isn’t four straight, five straight, four-in-five, or 19 straight series.

It’s the same as the Red Wings’ three-in-six from 1997-2002, better than the Devils’ three-in-nine from 1995-2003, one more than the Avalanche’s two-in-six from 1996-2001, and though those teams didn’t have to deal with the cap, they did have to deal with one another — and a perennially powerful Dallas team — at the top.

And I would take all of those teams over this Blackhawks squad in a fantasy tournament, just as I would take the Red Wings that went four-for-six from 1950-1955 in hypothetical all-time matchups.

It’s a double-edged blade. Just as the cap has made it more exponentially more difficult to keep a powerful team intact, it has also diluted the opposition. The bar just isn’t set as high. No great team, by the way, has ever faced less of a challenge than the five-time, 1956-60 champion Canadiens once Detroit ownership exiled Ted Lindsay in the summer of 1957.

Brooks continues...