In a season where parity was the catch phrase, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings have clearly been in a class of their own.

With a record of 7-5 so far, I’m not exactly on fire, but if there is one thing that the record shows it’s that in this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs the teams are so evenly matched that any team can beat the other on any given night.

The 2007-08 regular season was one of incredible parity in the NHL, and the playoffs have followed suit.

The upset of round one had to be the Dallas Stars' disposal of the defending Stanley Cup Champion Anaheim Ducks. For most of the last month of the season, the Stars were a team that couldn’t find their game, but in round one, they came together perfectly as they frustrated and picked apart the defending champs, and at times made Anaheim look like a bunch of undisciplined whiners. Well done to Dave Tippett and his staff.

This season had closer races than most in recent memory, as it took Game 81 in the Western Conference for the last team to clinch a playoff berth, and in the East, the improbable comeback run of the Washington Capitals took them to their 82nd and final game of the season to not only make the playoffs, but win the Southeast Division.

The one great thing about playoff hockey is that for both teams and individuals it is the great equalizer of a season. It doesn’t matter how well or how poorly you performed during the regular season, for the teams and players who make it, the post-season is where you are judged, and where great seasons can come to a crashing end, or poor seasons are resurrected over the course of four grueling rounds of play.

Remember, last season’s 43-win and 96-point campaign and first-round elimination was considered such a failure by general manager Darryl Sutter that it cost head coach Jim Playfair his job.

For many in the media world, it is often easy to sit back and take shots at the game. After all, a negative perspective on the game is much easier to come up with than finding a positive slant and it seldom needs any creativity to produce.

People love to complain, and many relish in other people’s failures. Unfortunately, it is a part of human nature.

But winning 10 of 12 at such a critical time in the season to get them there is even more impressive.

March 20, 1996, general manager Pat Quinn turned Alex Stojanov into Markus Naslund.

By the time Selanne would first step on the ice as a member of the Jets, Mike Modano, the first pick in that 88 draft, had three seasons under his belt and was well on his way to becoming the highest-scoring U.S. born player in the NHL.

In 1992, four years after Winnipeg made Teemu Selanne their first pick, Jets fans got their first look at the Finnish Flash and what an impact he would make.

He has earned the right with his style of play over the last decade for us not to question his desire to help the Toronto Maple Leafs win, and through his negotiation of a no-trade clause in his contract, had every right to refuse an offer to move. That’s not the issue here.

The question that has to be asked though, with his refusal to move, has Sundin announced his retirement?

Chad, in response to your comments where you say: “You can't attack a strength. That's why it’s a strength. This article is full of backwards logic.”

I would be interested in knowing what level of experience you have as a player or a coach. In preparing a game plan for an opponent, one of the first things you have to do is identify the team’s strengths and create ways that your team can counteract them.

In fact, there have been times when they have looked to be unbeatable, and have had winning streaks of seven, eight and nine in a row. Through the first 55 games of an 82-game schedule only twice had they lost more than one in a row, and were an impressive 41-10-4.

On Feb.18, the Wings beat the Colorado Avalanche 4-0 giving them their 42nd win of the season in their 62nd game. If you do the math, that’s seven games with just one win.

The on-ice action however wasn’t the biggest news of the week for either team, rather it was what they did off the ice, and much like the games that they played, the results were a win-win.

Not only was this the most-watched Super Bowl ever, it was the second most-watched event in U.S. television history. Only the final episode of M.A.S.H. drew more eyeballs to the TV set.

While the spectacle that is now the Super Bowl is regarded as the greatest single event in sports by most, the hardware that the players are playing for doesn’t live up to the hype.

In just over a month, the defending Stanley Cup champions have gone from a team that was struggling to find consistency and couldn’t seem to get their game back to an elite level, to a team that looks like it could challenge to become the first back-to-back Cup winners since the Detroit Red Wings in 1997-98.

When defenceman Scott Niedermayer ended his early retirement plans and returned to the Ducks blue-line, the team got an instant jolt of energy. Anaheim was an average team playing uninspired hockey and was sitting at 15-15-4 and in jeopardy of not making the playoffs.