By Stu Hackel

Of the many things that Nick Lidstrom said Thursday morning while announcing the end of his remarkable playing career (video), it was perhaps the last one in his prepared remarks that spoke the loudest: “Retiring today,” he said, “allows me to walk away from the game with pride rather than have the game walk away from me.”

This is a player who for much of last season was considered the best defenseman in the NHL, and if he returned next season, he’d still be one of the best players. But after being slowed by injuries and unable to raise his level of play in this year’s postseason, Lidstrom has his own standard of excellence to uphold. He knows he’s lost the inner drive to train as hard as he must this offseason in order to bounce back and reach that level of greatness again. He won’t cheat himself, he won’t cheat his teammates and he won’t cheat the fans if he can’t play with the same determined excellence that made him, without question, the best defenseman of his era.

That’s not just me making that evaluation of Lidstrom’s talent and legacy, that’s the opinion of Scotty Bowman.

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You can expect that Mike Richards’ Kings and Zach Parise’s Devils will go at each other fast and hard. (Andy Marlin/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

So here’s the Stanley Cup Final no one could have anticipated in early April. Kirk Penton of The Winnipeg Sun figured out that this is the “worst” match-up in 20 years: “New Jersey was ninth overall and the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference, while the Kings were 13th overall and eighth in the Western Conference,” he wrote. “Their regular-season placings total 22. The only higher sum was in 1991, when the No. 7 Pittsburgh Penguins beat the No. 16 Minnesota North Stars. In fact, not since the playoffs expanded to 16 teams in 1980 has the better seed among the finalists been as low as No. 9 overall.” But he was quick to say that this was just a technicality, insisting “New Jersey and Los Angeles should be solid entertainment.” True that.

As low as their seeds may have been, the Devils and Kings belong in this series. The Kings were underachievers for most of the regular season, in part due to not having Mike Richards at full strength after he was concussed in December. The Devils were without their top center, Travis Zajac, for 67 games. And both teams had to adjust to new systems brought in by new coaches — one at the start of the season, one during it — that emphasized aggressive forechecking. The saying goes that “It’s not the best teams that get to play for the Cup  but the teams playing the best.” Now that they’re healthy and comfortable playing a style that fits their personnel, it’s hard to argue that these two currently aren’t the best teams in hockey.

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A key question: how battle-tested are the Kings after three rounds? (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

Having dusted the Phoenix Coyotes in somewhat dominant fashion over five games, the Los Angeles Kings reached the Stanley Cup Final for only the second time in franchise history, and first since 1993. Most people will have them favored to win the Cup on the strength of their convincing first three rounds although — as good as they’ve been, and they’ve been very good — nothing is ever certain in the postseason. Any Kings fan who is already wondering about the championship parade route runs the very real risk of underestimating how difficult the last four victories of the season can be.

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If the Rangers can’t get their offense going, stellar goalie Henrik Lundqvist will have to steal another win. (Paul Bereswill/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

Will the Devils be able to build on their 4-1 Game 4 win when they visit Madison Square Garden tonight for Game 5 or will the Rangers frustrate, if not disrupt, New Jersey’s territorial dominance and find the offensive gear that was absent on Monday in Newark? Those are the main questions facing these two teams in what is now a best-of-three and the only series left before the Stanley Cup Final begins one week from today.

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Brandon Prust’s suspension for elbowing Anton Volchenkov’s head in Game 3 removes some physicality from the Rangers’ lineup as they try to take command of the series. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

It’s Game 4 in Newark tonight and a big one. A Rangers win over the Devils would give them a 3-1 lead in the series and a chance to close it out at home in Game 5. New Jersey, which always won the big games it had to against the Panthers and Flyers earlier this spring, looks to even the series at 2-2 and make it a minimum six-game affair. And to add some fuel to this combustible rivalry, the physical nature of the series has heated up and the coaches are getting into it.

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The Devils have a 3-0 lead in Stanley Cups over their cross-river rivals since the Rangers last won the chalice, but trail badly in fan popularity and media coverage. (Andy Marlin/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

The Rangers visit New Jersey on Saturday afternoon for Game 3, and on Monday Night for Game 4, of their Eastern Conference Championship series and a case can be made that this is the biggest series in Devils franchise history.

Yes, of course: the match-ups that the Devils won in 1995, 2000 and 2003 to win the Stanley Cup count as huge series, monumental in scope. But now they have a chance to repay New York for that memorable third round defeat in 1994, the decision coming in the second overtime period of Game 7, which sent the Rangers on to the Cup final and thrust the Devils back into their shadows. That was the game ended by Stephane Matteau and it gets played and replayed endlessly on MSG Network, the TV home of the Rangers and the Devils.

And even though the Devils can claim three Cups to the Rangers’ one since 1994, in the Broadway Blueshirts’ shadow they remain — maybe not in the hockey world, where the Devs are a respected franchise, but on their home turf in the New York metropolitan area. The Rangers dominate the scene over the Devils as well as the somnolent Islanders and a head-to-head victory in this round might earn New Jersey a bigger, long-deserved share of the spotlight.

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After its last lockout in 2004-05, the NHL had to work to smooth things over with its paying customers. (Charles Krupa/AP Photos)

By Stu Hackel

You probably don’t want to read this any more than I want to write it, but the momentum of the Stanley Cup playoffs hit a speed bump on Wednesday when word got out that the NHL had formally notified the NHLPA that it intends to change and/or end the current collective bargaining agreement. If the worst-case scenario results, if the owners eventually decide to lock out the players next fall, this formal notification will go down as the first shot in hockey’s next labor war.

Just what another lockout would do to the NHL, its relationship with its fans and  business partners — not to mention the players — can only be speculated upon. But no one needs to consult ancient hockey history books to recall what the lockout of 2004-05 did and the extent to which the league had to go to repair the damage.  How well the NHL eventually rebounded is a great tribute to everyone connected with the game, but squandering all gain just seven years later and plunging us into darkness again greatly risks a different outcome this time.

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All hail the Kings: Jeff Carter (77), Drew Doughty (8), Mike Richards (10), Rob Scuderi (7), Dustin Penner and company are winning with confidence and uncommon authority. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

It’s still a good month before the captain of an NHL team hoists the Stanley Cup over his head and a lot can happen between now and then. But on the basis of the first three games in the Conference Championship round, there is no more impressive team at this moment than the Los Angeles Kings.

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By Stu Hackel

As a group, hockey coaches don’t often command the spotlight when the cameras roll. They defer to their players and reserve whatever fiery rhetorical skills they possess for the sanctity of the dressing room.

Guys like Dale Hunter and Darryl Sutter will never make the list of the century’s great orators, anyway. But then there’s the Rangers’ John Tortorella, the subject of the video tribute above (the great work of DJ Steve Porter who, as Yahoo’s Puck Daddy Editor Greg Wyshynski relates, has a pretty impressive history of remixing video clips, hockey and otherwise) that appeared on Saturday over Hockey Night In Canada.

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How much Dale Hunter’s relationship with Alexander Ovechkin factored into the coach’s decision to quit is an intriguing question. (Rob Carr/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

The mercurial NHL coaching career of Dale Hunter came to an end on Monday when he told the Washington Capitals that, after less than six months, it was time to go. He did a lot in a short time, turning the glamorous Caps into a team suddenly known for glamorless defense. He got them into the playoffs, knocked off the defending Stanley Cup champion Bruins in the tightest seven-game series in playoff history and took the Eastern Conference’s top seed, the Rangers, to seven games before succumbing, 2-1, on Saturday. But now he’ll return to his OHL team, the London Knights, one of hockey’s most successful junior franchises, which he co-owns with his brother Mark.

“It wasn’t unexpected,” Caps GM George McPhee told reporters at the team’s suburban practice facility (video). But for those who saw in Hunter’s makeover the direction that the club must take to achieve that elusive playoff success in the Alex Ovechkin Era, the coach’s departure can’t be anything but a disappointment. Perhaps speaking for that segment of Caps Nation, The Post’s sports columnist Tom Boswell called Hunter’s decision “UNBELIEVABLE!”

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