The depths of the NHL's playoff contenders

You need superstars to win the Stanley Cup. You also need players that can carry the game when the superstars are not on the ice (or not dominating on their own).

There is no one recipe or correct playing style for winning the Stanley Cup.

Some teams win with defense. Some with offense. Some win by being big and physical, while others take a faster, more skillful approach.

Most of them win with homegrown talent at the top of their roster.

A few of them can do it by acquiring their stars and building from outside the organization.

The bottom line is you simply need to have good players, have all of them be healthy at the right time of the year, and get a little bit of luck mixed in.

While the playing style of those players might differ, there are still some common denominators that pretty much every Stanley Cup Final team has.

• They all have top-tier players at forward and defense. Somebody that can score at a top-20 (or higher) rate across the league. They usually have more than one of these guys. The only recent Stanley Cup winner that MAYBE did not have this was the 2019 St. Louis Blues, and even then would largely depend on how highly you think of Vladimir Tarasenko (I thought very highly of him at that stage of his career, so I think they still fit this criteria).

• They usually have a bonafide top-pairing defender that can play 25-30 minutes and control the game and can play in all situations. Somebody like Victor Hedman, Cale Makar, Alex Pietrangelo, Duncan Keith, Kris Letang, Drew Doughty, or John Carlson.

• They have to have competent goaltending. It does not need to be a franchise player or Vezina caliber goalie. If the rest of the team is strong enough it just needs to be somebody that is not going to lose you games.

• They also have depth. Good depth. Usually very good depth. It does not matter how good your top-tier players are, or how good your goaltending is, if you are putting two lines on the ice each night at the bottom of your lineup that can not keep their heads above water it is going to be extraordinarily difficult to win. It does not matter how good your best players are at the top, they can not play all 60 minutes and come playoff time there does tend to be some games where your best players get canceled out by the other team’s best players. Sidney Crosby and Nikita Kucherov and Connor McDavid are not going to score every game. Sometimes they will go a few games, or even an entire series, without scoring. When that happens you better have people elsewhere in the lineup that can help make up for that. You absolutely can not win without the stars. But the stars can not win a Stanley Cup by themselves. You have to support them.

So with that in mind, let’s take a look at the NHL’s playoff contenders and see whose depth pieces are performing the best, who needed the most help before the trade deadline, and who meaningfully addressed it.

The Colorado Avalanche and Tampa Bay Lightning seemed to understand the assignment and did what they desperately needed.

But did they do enough?

I also have some concerns for some other contenders, while the New York Rangers and Vancouver Canucks should be extremely concerned about the players they have at the top of their lineups.

Let’s talk about it.