The ice has been melted down. Hockey’s Holy Grail has been raised by everyone from the Conn Smythe winner to the Los Angeles Kings’ front office interns. The last drops of Moet on the dressing room floor have been mopped.

The 2014 Stanley Cup Playoffs have been over since Friday night, leaving some time for perceptive reflection on this query:

Was this the best NHL postseason in decades?

I had this conversation with a number of veteran hockey writers while covering the playoffs – men and women who have watched more puck than I’ve taken breaths on this celestial rock. Unanimously, they praised these playoffs as some of the most well-played, unpredictable and entertaining they could recall.

There’s some supporting evidence for this. Twelve of the 15 playoff series went six games or more, with the Boston Bruins’ five-game win over the Detroit Red Wings, the Montreal Canadiens’ sweep of the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Kings’ win over the Rangers in the Final finishing early.

Seven series went seven games; five of them featured comebacks by the eventual winning team in which they were down at least 3-2 in the series. The Rangers rallied from 3-1 down to the Penguins. The Kings, of course, became only the fourth team in NHL history to rally from an 0-3 hole to win a playoff series, as the expense of their rivals the San Jose Sharks in Round 1.

The Kings played the Sharks and the Ducks – their two geographic rivals – before taking on the defending champion Chicago Blackhawks that eliminated the Kings in the 2013 conference final. Their series culminated in a classic, insanely chaotic overtime win in Game 7 – one of three road Game 7 victories for the Kings, an NHL record.

The Rangers? They needed seven games to oust Philly, and then another seven to eliminate Sidney Crosby and the Penguins – two classic division rivals. That’s after Columbus won its first-ever playoff games and gave Pittsburgh a memorable scare. Oh, and Montreal upset their arch rivals from Boston in a seven-game thriller, culminating in Milan Lucic threatening to kill everyone.

The quality of hockey was incredible (thanks, Western Conference!). The tension was off the charts. The series were anything but predictable, sometimes in victors but always in methodology. We had suspension controversies and questionable calls. We had water bottle squirting become a thing. And we had a moment of striking humanity as a star player lost his mother, he played the next game and his team rallied around him to go on a run that lead to them to the Cup Final.

And that’s not even mentioning the three overtime games in the Stanley Cup Final, including the double-overtime one that ended the postseason.

Exhale …

Why were the playoffs so damn good? The luck of the draw would be one explanation, but that would ignore the fact that the NHL made its own luck.

The new playoff format – shifting the League from a 1-through-8 conference based setup to a divisional playoff format complete with wild card teams – was created to force rivalry series in earlier rounds. And it’s rivalry series we got.

Sure, these emotional matchups didn’t lead to the really cool stuff like line brawls – we can’t expect the inert, placatory brand of NHL hockey in the regular season to suddenly change course in the playoffs, can we? – but they did lead to some outstanding lengthy battles. Is it coincidence that the Flyers pushed the Rangers to seven? Or that the Blackhawks and Blues played six overtime periods in six games? Or that the Kings staged their historic rally against a team they collectively loathe?

What about this notion: That the Western Conference, which produced the best hockey and best teams in the tourmanent, stayed fresher because of the new format. Chicago played St. Louis and then Minnesota, instead of San Jose and then maybe L.A in the second round. LA stayed in California for two rounds.

Curious why the Kings weren't "The Skating Dead" by the end of their series with the Rangers? It's because, for the first time in NHL history, the California team didn't have a travel disadvantage.

(And the whole format helped TV viewers, too.)

Maybe this is all the playoff format, maybe not; but compared to what might have been, there’s no question the pieces fit better than had the format not changed.

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