Lets play five forwards in the series against Columbus and see how you like that.
Where exactly did I say that was a good strategy? How exactly did cup winning teams being better at offense and goaltending on average turn into completely abandoning an entire position?
The whole point in this is that contrary to what the original poster claimed based solely on a parroted media narrative, defense does not win championships. Defense is not more important than any other position, including in the playoffs. Cups can be won with many different combinations of positional proficiency, but if we were to pinpoint one of the 3 that has been
least important to winning a cup, it has factually been defense. I supported this with evidence.
This doesn't mean we ignore defense. It means we stop building Columbus up to be some playoff dynasty just because they play good defense. It means we stop tearing down our own team just because our primary strength is offense. We are fully capable of winning with the way we are constructed.
You need it all and it needs to be good to win.
Except that's not really true. We have many examples of teams that are relatively weak in a position, especially in the regular season, who go on to win.
There is really only one apparent similarity between all of the past 12 cup winners. They were all good at offense in the playoffs.