TheLightning are playing without one of the best forwards on the planet. They, somehow, make the most sense of the four remaining teams in the Stanley Cup playoffs.This is because hockey rarely makes sense. That's what makes it great; if Craig Reynolds Jersey you're on the right side of the unpredictability, it's exhilarating and awesome and fun. If you're on the other side the Capitals, for example it's something much, much worse.MORE: That's not meant as a knock on the overall caliber of Tampa Bay, Pittsburgh, San Jose or St. Louis, either; these are very, very good teams we're talking about. On a more visceral level, though, it feels insane, doesn't it?For varying reasons, all of these teams carry baggage that would make a Cup run surreal and weird. Think about it.Joe Thornton (Getty Images) San Jose. The Sharks were ready to blow up their franchise barely more thana year ago; they were desperate to trade Joe Thornton, a born playoff loser who somehow manages to average nearly a point per Richard Lane Jersey game in the playoffs. They let him flap in the breeze for months, removed his C and eventually gave it to someone else.There's an organizational history of failure there, which , but we'll pick it up in 2014. This is when things really started to snowball, pushing them down the road to a stupid decision that they managed never to make. Blowing a 3-0 series lead will have that effect. In those four consecutive lo ses, it wasn't enough to lose. They got demolished outscored 18-5 by, and this makes it worse, the eventual champion LA Kings.That set things in in 2014 that saw Thornton and Patrick Marleau lose their lettersand an influx of bad, "tough" players.They fought through that to make the postseason, but not before Thornton said GM Doug Wilson needed to " ." It was a disaster, though Wilson rebounded perfectly by adding players like defenseman Paul Martin and shipping out the ill-advised additions.Still, this is about Thornton.It's impo sible to remember an MVP who has consistently been slept on and disrespected more than him.He's been an avatar for bad luck and organizational mi steps, and he's never deserved it.The end result is that the idea of him skating with the Cup and with this team, after all of that is disorienting.St. Louis. Nobody gets slept on more in the discu sion of tortured franchises than the Blues. The only Cup finals they've gone to were in their first three years of existence. They've gone to the postseason 37 more times 37! without making it back. That fan base, rightfully, has a complex about it all. Not many have had to handle as much.More recently, they failed to turn enormous regular-season succe s into Alex Anzalone Jersey so much as a first-round win. After holding off on a full rebuild in the offseason only T.J. Oshie got the boot they managed to knock off the defending champion Blackhawks in the first round andthen the Stars, the only team that finished ahead of them in the regular season. And they beat both in Game 7s. Steven Montez Jersey These guys were punch lines a month ago, with the exact opposite reputation, and it was deserved.Pittsburgh . The Penguins, as recently as December, were on a slow boat to nowhere. It was impo sible to imagine them doing anything more than boring their opponents into submi sion just long enough to get crushed in the first round. Thenthey fired Mike Johnston, added team speed and, suddenly, managed to stop wasting the primes of their two all-world players.Everyone knew Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin had it in them, though; they did it in 2009. As for Phil Ke sel, a lot of people thought they knew the exact opposite.Forget how terrible the Maple Leafs were for the vast majority of his time there, or that he was good in the postseason whenever he reached it. Ke sel's individual reputation was significantly worse than Thornton's or any of the Blues. , and all those games he lost in Toronto, and the media attention that all drew. If you're sort of weird and the highest-paid player on a terrible team in the largest media market in the sport, stuff is going to stick.So Maple Leafs fans, who tend to either love or hate Ke sel, and plenty of media members who come closer AJ Parker Jersey to the latter, could wind up watching him do a lap with his arms up in June. Phil Ke sel is on the team that's favored to win the Stanley Cup. Phil Ke sel, .Tampa Bay . The Lightning don't have any pending surrealities on those scale. If they win, though, they'll either do it without their best player, or with Steven Stamkos returning from a blood clot in the middle of the playoffs. Jonathan Drouin will probably figure in, too; all he did was (understandably) demand a midseason trade, get sent to the AHL and wind up back on the rosteras a major contributor.That, somehow, qualifies as "meh" here. Hockey, man. It's weird.