Smith is the biggest reason Phoenix is moving on. (US Presswire)

For the first time since they became the Coyotes and the franchise's first time since 1987, Phoenix's hockey team has won a playoff series. Or maybe it would be better to say Mike Smith won a playoff series.

There's no doubt that if you were to name a Conn Smythe winner after just one round of the playoffs, Smith is taking it home. The Coyotes were thoroughly outplayed for the majority of Game 6. Really, that didn't differ from any of the first five games either. Yet the Coyotes won four of the six games, capped off by a 4-0 win on Monday.

You want to see how good Smith was in this series? He faced 80 more shots than his counterpart, Corey Crawford for the 'Hawks. That's in six games. Obviously shots aren't an indicator of who is going to win, but it usually is a good place to look for clues.

To boot, the Game 6 performance was as slanted or even more so against the Coyotes. Smith stopped all 38 shots he saw. The Coyotes only had 20, but four of them went in. And some of those came on a late five-minute power play.

This was a guy who was let go last offseason by the Tampa Bay Lightning. Think about that for a second. The Lightning chose to keep Dwayne Roloson over Smith, a franchise that is so desperate for goaltenders right now. What the Bolts didn't see the Coyotes clearly did as they picked Smith to be the guy to replace Ilya Bryzgalov.

I don't know if even they saw him being this good.

Credit where credit is due; the Coyotes play a system that makes goalies look good under Dave Tippett. A lot of goaltenders will fare better there than most other teams in the league. But that takes away from Smith too much. The Blackhawks just couldn't beat him. He was spectacular.

There's no way you can tell me the people in Chicago wouldn't have liked to swap goalies in this series. In fact, Chicago might be spending the offseason trying to find their own Mike Smith. Again. Because as great as Smith was, Crawford was ... well, I'll just say not as good.

Now the Predators are up and you can you imagine this? You will have Smith vs. Pekka Rinne. In case that doesn't whet your appetite enough, the other series will have Jonathan Quick vs. Brian Elliott/Jaroslav Halak. I hope you like goaltending and defense, because you're going to see a lot of it with those teams.

Anybody want to challenge the conventional wisdom that defense wins championships? I didn't think so.

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