While there are general commonalities among them, the formula for Cup success is by no means an exact science.
We aren’t here today to tackle a subject so vast, though. Instead, we are going to look at one fairly obvious characteristic of every Cup winner, one the Leafs are trying to piece together at the moment: a shutdown pairing on defense.
At forward, a team can attack the tough matchups in all sorts of ways: a combination of lines and looks, a pure checking line, a head-to-head matchup of best-on-best, a zone-matching scheme — you name it.