Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.

A galaxy of Pittsburgh Penguins stars blinked out, just like that; the only light remaining was from black dwarves Brandon Sutter and Chris Kunitz. At the center of it all, the pillar upon which Claude Julien has constructed his defense and his team and his approach to the game itself, was the NHL's resident Galactus, a towering world-eater who has been the best at his job in the entire world for a period of several years.

The fact that we aren't falling down in with sheer joy at the idea of being able to watch Zdeno Chara play smothering, punishing, enveloping defense every time he climbs over the boards like a giant is a little sickening.

Men of his size have moved with grace and skill and speed in other sports, but never in the full armor of an NHL player. Others approach his size, of course. Tyler Myers and John Scott and the late Derek Boogaard, all just an inch shorter. Hal Gill and Brian Boyle check in at 6-foot-7. But none have played the game at a level even approaching that of Chara's, who now moves on to his second Stanley Cup Final in three years.

Just how unappreciated is Chara in his own time, even with the acknowledgement that he is indeed a former Norris Trophy winner and six-time All-Star? There were certain elements of the Boston media who, as recently as the Maple Leafs series, were advocating that he be stripped of the Bruins' captaincy. All that, though, has gone as silent as Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, James Neal, Kris Letang, Jarome Iginla, and all but five Penguins did in their terrible dud of an Eastern Conference Finals sweep.

That Chara wasn't nominated for the Norris again this season -- or indeed, in any season since about 2007 -- seems like borderline criminal oversight by the people who vote on this sort of thing, and whose ballots typically run more or less in accordance with Nos. 1-3 in scoring by defensemen for any given season.

Letang (who utterly embarrassed himself in every zone during this Eastern Conference Final), PK Subban and Ryan Suter were among the nominees who finished ahead of Chara, and there they go at Nos. 2, 1, and 3, respectively, in points this season.

Chara? Well shoot, you gotta click over to the second page to find him in a tie for 38th with Patrick Wiercioch and Marek Zidlicky, among others, at 19 points this season.

What a bum, right?

Obviously he has a little bit of help on the defensive side of things, what with another terribly underrated defenseman in Dennis Seidenberg capable of parachuting into any matchup, alongside Chara or apart from him, as well as Patrice Bergeron, the premier defensive center in the world, in front of him. All have combined to put Tuukka Rask, as with Tim Thomas before him, in line to become a very, very rich goaltender.

Maybe, too, it's the ordinariness of Chara's excellence that makes it so difficult to appreciate.

A night in which he's a minus player, as he was just 11 times in 62 games across this year's regular season and playoffs, and gets beaten for a few points from his opposition, is exceedingly rare. It's too bad, I guess, that he doesn't rush the puck with the fluidity of a Nicklas Lidstrom, widely considered the second-best defenseman of all time and, to Chara's detriment, very much of the same generation.

He doesn't rack up power play points like Subban, who had 26 this year, because the Bruins' man advantage generally stinks.

He doesn't lay anyone out in open ice like Dion Phaneuf.

If anything, the attribute for which he is most famous isn't his defensive prowess, which is going to land him in the Hockey Hall of Fame on the first ballot and maybe even win him a second Stanley Cup in the next few weeks, but rather his height, because you see he is very tall.

While the question of who should have won the Conn Smythe in 2011 was a pretty simple one, it certainly isn't quite so cut-and-dried this time around. Most would likely advocate Rask, given that he's conceded just 30 goals in 16 games this postseason. Some might say it should be David Krejci, who leads the postseason in points as he did the last time the Bruins won the Cup. Some might even say Patrice Bergeron, and that would be a very interesting argument. All three have obviously been great.