from Damien Cox at the Toronto Star,

The reigning champion Chicago Blackhawks have been forced to chop payroll costs so aggressively you get the feeling half the team will play next week’s home opener against the Rangers with large “For Sale” signs across their nameplates.

The Los Angeles Kings, meanwhile, have had to endure a truly ugly post-season, one in which two veteran players were caught in drug-related snares while a third was convicted of domestic assault and decided to pack up and return to Russia rather than be deported.

So if you’re the Anaheim Ducks watching all of this from afar, knowing that you’ve fallen to those two teams in the last two post-seasons and then watched them go on to win the Stanley Cup, it would be hard not to get the feeling the path to a championship is being cleared.

Not to celebrate the struggles of others, but. . . .

It’s possible the Ducks were hockey’s second-best team each of those past two seasons, but have nothing to show for it. With a team that was already deep and talented with a nice mix of youth and veteran talent, GM Bob Murray went out with a to-do list over the summer and was able to put a check mark beside every item:

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