Geoff Burke-USA TODAY SportsThe NHL Eastern Conference has the reputation of being the more freewheeling and offensively oriented of the two conferences. Not in these playoffs.
Think about it. The Eastern Conference boasts some of the most offensively gifted players of this or any other era. Sidney Crosby. Alex Ovechkin. Steven Stamkos. John Tavares. Evgeni Malkin. Pavel Datsyuk. The list goes on. Asked to describe the Eastern Conference game, most would come up with things like "wide-open", "high-scoring", "loose" or some combination thereof. This is in stark contrast to the Western Conference, where the adjectives would be something like "physical", "tight", "defensive." All of…
