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A couple of days before the break, the insightful skipper explained the progression.

Photo by Claus Andersen/Getty Images

“I think you go through certain stages,” Ward said. “First, you go from a nobody to an upstart. When you’re a nobody, you’re sort of losing all the time. And then you learn to win a little bit and on any given night, you can beat another team, but you really aren’t reliable in terms of what your process is and how often you win. Then, I think you become a winning team with a little bit more time and experience, and by that I mean your record is around .500 or a little above .500. You learn more lessons and then you become a team that wins on a regular basis and you’re not just a winning team now, you’re talked about in the circles of being a contending team.”

Just a reminder, as you read the rest of this answer, that Ward owns a 2011 Stanley Cup ring, a memento from his stint as an assistant coach in Boston.

“And then you go from being a contending team to learning how to be a champion, and some special teams will go from being a champion to learning how to be a dynasty,” he continued. “At every step along the way, there are things that need to happen, there are lessons that need to be learned and there are processes that need to be reinforced as you move along that curve. How long that takes depends on the team and the individual people on the team.

“Where are we at right now? I think we’re a team that is learning how to be a contending team. I would put us in that category right now. We’re making steps. But in every step of the process or the evolution of the team, there are pitfalls you can get into. With us, it’s no different. We have lessons to learn. We have things we need to reinforce in our process so these things become like a science experiment — you get the same result every time you do it.”