All right, so it wouldn't exactly feel like spring in the NHL if Brian Burke didn't have something to complain about.

MEASURING THE DEPTHS

EASTERN CONFERENCE Ottawa: If Vaclav Varada can return healthy, the Senators would seem to have all the makings of a true championship contender. But hasn't that been said before? New Jersey: If depth means a checking line winger in Grant Marshall and a fifth or sixth defenseman in Richard Smehlik ... there will be no joy in the Meadow this spring. Tampa Bay: Defense bolstered with additions of Marc Bergevin and Janne Laukkenan. As far as the thin scoring lines, there is nothing new for the Bolts to go to. Physically, they fall short up front. Philadelphia: Sami Kapanen offers speed the occasional offensive flair to a checking line, and Tony Amonte gives top-line center Jeremy Roenick someone to play with. Biggest boost are healthy returns -- John LeClair is back, and Simon Gagne (groin) and Justin Williams (knee) say they'll be good to go for the playoffs, too. Toronto: Owen Nolan is scoring value and checking power; Glen Wesley offers the Leafs some long overdue stability on the blue line; Phil Housley can be a power-play monster in the playoffs. And Doug Gilmour, even on crutches, is "good for the room." Washington: With their budget bounds already stretched, the Caps couldn't do much to get deeper at the deadline. With Sergei Berezin, they have a couple of lines that can score, one that can check and a defense that just has to hope Olaf Kolzig can get as hot as he was a few years ago. Boston: They should be helped by the return of Sergei Samsonov. Trading for Ian Moran and Dan McGillis fills out the blue line. Although, they'd be a lot deeper up front and in the rear if they didn't simply let Bill Guerin and Byron Dafoe go. N.Y. Islanders: Janne Niinimaa was a huge acquisition for the power play. Letting Claude Lapointe go to possible playoff opponent Philadelphia may come back to haunt them. WESTERN CONFERENCE Detroit: Mathieu Schneider makes the Detroit power play a seamless machine that will carry the Wings to another Stanley Cup. Oh, and the late season addition of Steve Yzerman helps the forward depth a little, too. Dallas: A healthy Bill Guerin is required to maximize Mike Modano's skills. With Pierre Turgeon, Jason Arnott and now Stu Barnes, however, they aren't exactly hurting. Newcomer Lyle Odelein will prove a value pickup for the defense, too. Vancouver: They needed a second-line scorer. If only they had enough payroll room to have pulled off such a deal. St. Louis: Take away Chris Pronger and Keith Tkachuk, and all the late-season additions couldn't have added up to enough, anyway. Colorado: Added Bates Battaglia for scoring depth and Bryan Marchment for criminal effect. But was shipping out Radim Vrbata for Bates Battaglia really needed? Minnesota: A team that's only been around for a few years must be deep enough to have earned a solid six spot in the best conference's playoff race. Anaheim: Sandis Ozolinsh has found a place where he's needed, not just tolerated, and previously deceased Steve Thomas has been resurrected as a goal scorer. Believe it or not, this team has some scoring depth now. Edmonton: Gotta love the Oilers. If they can't win it all, why bother paying people to help them win one round? So it's so long to top defenseman Janne Niinimaa and top forward Anson Carter.

Burke's latest rant, though -- amazingly, this one didn't involve any referees -- was right on the mark. From top to bottom, his Vancouver Canucks seem to have every reason to believe they have as much chance of winning a Stanley Cup as the next Western Conference team does.

(Sorry, but Eastern Conference teams don't count when it comes to discussions about actually winning the Cup instead of just competing for it).

In the standings, the Canucks are right there with Detroit and Dallas at the top of the conference. On the roster sheet, they boast of the league's best goal scorer in Markus Naslund. He's the star of what is actually the league's best line (with Brendan Morrison and Todd Bertuzzi). Behind them are solid centers in Matt Cooke and Trevor Linden, a defensive stud in Ed Jovanovski, a power-play set-up shooter in Brent Sopel and a go-to goaltender in Dan Cloutier who is always solid, if unspectacular.

But Burke knows the law of the playoffs ... and why his teams haven't gone very far in them. Sure, the Canucks are better than that trendy 2002 Eastern pretender, the Carolina Hurricanes, but the they simply don't have the top-to-bottom intangible that recent history deems necessary to win a championship.

Depth.

And as the busiest March trading season in league history rolled along, you had to have money in order to get into the game. Naturally, Burke wound up ranting.

"Several of those teams are chasing us in the standings and there was more pressure on them to make a deal like that, so I think a lot of the future was given away," Burke said about possible playoff opponents such as St. Louis and Dallas, who increased the depth of their talent pools even more at the March 11 trading deadline.

Can't imagine how that ticked Brian Burke off. "I think teams made a lot of deals in the last couple of days that they're going to regret with the futures they gave up," added Burke, who added tough guy Brad May -- who likely won't see much ice time in the playoffs -- for a draft pick at the deadline. "If you pick up a Stu Barnes and he's at $2.6 (actually $2.8 million, but Burke was on a roll) for the next two years, that's (about) $5 million. Dallas picked up (Barnes) to get an insurance power-play guy. That's a deal I can't afford to make. I can't afford $5 million for insurance. That's why the math doesn't work work at the trading deadline. GMs get too cute and gamble too much and end up paying for it. They made trades that made them better, but not to the point where I feel I had to match."

Fair enough. Now try to go win a Cup with Trent Klatt and Daniel Sedin as your deeper-line wings.

For it all to work in Vancouver now, Naslund and his top-line mates are going to have to get a lot of power-play opportunities and Cloutier is going to have to start playing like Patrick Roy. Otherwise, teams that have known for years that the secret to playoff hockey begins with budget flexibility are going to be right there again this spring.

Already armed with a payroll the size of at least three New York-area boroughs, the Detroit Red Wings pumped up at the deadline by acquiring Mathieu Schneider, this conference's best offensive defenseman next to the Blues' Al MacInnis and Nicklas Lidstrom, who already works in Detroit.

Along with the expedited development of should-be-rookie-of-the-year Henrik Zetterberg, the move makes the defending champion Wings as strong as ever, and the odds-on favorite to repeat. Imagine a team that can play a 500-plus goal guy in Luc Robitaille on a fourth line. They have 11 players in double figures in goal scoring now, a deep defense and Curtis Joseph for kicks.

Rated 1-A in favorites would be the Dallas Stars. Still based on a defense-first philosophy, they've been the league's deepest offensive team. With Marty Turco proving a fine replacement for Ed Belfour, the Stars also had the league's best record for most of the season ... and only got stronger at the deadline. Unrestricted free-agent prize Bill Guerin was going great guns until incurring a terrible injury that threatened to turn into a Cam Neely concrete bruise. So while Guerin (hopefully) heals, the Stars acquired Barnes from Buffalo. Earlier, the Stars brought in Claude Lemieux from Phoenix. Think those 50-year-old legs will have something left when the playoffs start?

Lemieux should be the poster child of playoff depth gathering efforts, and the Stars are the prototype for teams building with veteran experience at the lower forward levels. Consider a club that still pays Kirk Muller, Ulf Dahlen and Rob DiMaio as contributors, and mostly gets its money's worth.

For perspective, we call upon a former Dallas coach by the name of Ken Hitchcock.

"I remember in Dallas we signed Pat Verbeek to an offer sheet," said Hitchcock, now trying to turn the Philadelphia Flyers into the Stars of old -- and the 100 deals they made before the deadline showed just that.

	“	...There's no fighting in the playoffs. It's too risky. So now you have to have people on your fourth line who can actually play. ”
		— Ken Hitchcock. Flyers coach

"(Verbeek) came in during the season as our second right winger," said Hitchcock, "but in the playoffs, because of additions we made at the trade deadline, he ended up as our fourth right winger. And he was really good in playing 10-12 minutes. He swallowed his pride and was really effective. Guys have to do that to win.

"Look at Detroit," added Hitchcock, who usually does so with a trace of envy. "They've made Luc Robitaille a 12-minute player to have success, and he did it last season, and he'll have to do it again. There are stories like that everywhere of older guys doing what they have to do to win. The reason is there's no fighting in the playoffs. It's too risky. So now you have to have people on your fourth line who can actually play. It has to be an energy line, a line that can help change the momentum of a hockey game."

Which brings us to the Canucks, who probably can't build a fourth playoff line like that. Then there's the Colorado Avalanche, who traded away a tremendous second-line forward in Chris Drury at the start of the season, and now have to be content with the thought that the league's second-best line (Peter Forsberg, Milan Hejduk, Alex Tanguay), a hopefully healthy Joe Sakic and an ageless Roy can be enough to play with the Wings or Stars.

Another talented club encroaching on depth-starved territory are the St. Louis Blues, whose idea of acquiring depth is getting another goaltender. To be fair, the Blues were decimated by injuries this season. But they've also been hurt by Larry Pleau's extended insistence that Brent Johnson could someday do for his team what Chris Osgood once did for Detroit.

Finally realizing that wasn't going to work, Pleau went out and got Osgood from the Islanders. Now Pleau can deal with an overvalued, unrestricted goalie in the summertime. Unfortunately for the Blues, the prolonged absence of Chris Pronger and their latest injury to Keith Tkachuk continues to prevent them from having a reason to believe.

Although they certainly would play well in the East.

Over there, the Ottawa Senators are as stocked as they've ever been and are speeding past 100 (points) en route to a possible President's Trophy. Or is that Prime Minister's Trophy?

Anyway, the old Ottawa lament of never being able to beat Toronto is still rooting deep. And in response to the monied Maple Leafs acquiring key players at the deadline -- Owen Nolan, Glen Wesley, Phil Housley and his healing bones and Doug Gilmour's 40-year-old knee -- the Senators made a couple of deals of their own.

To create a third scoring-capable line, they made a nice move in acquiring Bryan Smolinski from the Kings. And hearing for years they had to get tougher, they picked on fellow bankruptcy court resident Buffalo and picked up Vaclav Varada. He promptly hurt his knee. So then, the Sens did the inexplicable. They traded for Varada's former tough-guy teammate Rob Ray. What can he provide a playoff team?

"I'm more like an insurance policy," Ray said. "To give the offensive guys the security to know that they can play their game, and that if the game gets to that point, to help them out."

Oh. Maybe that's what having depth is really all about.

Rob Parent of the Delaware County (Pa.) Times is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.