I struggle to think of a time when I disagreed with a post more lol.
The Stopko for MVP argument follows the eternally flawed logic that when you remove a player from the team they are gone without replacement. By that logic, a goalie is always MVP as most teams have CPUs if you "take them off the team". If Toronto didn't have Stopko they'd have Carison and still finish fifth. Stopko didn't do much more in the regular season than Ironside and Arroyo to slightly shift Toronto above Quebec otherwise they performed exactly as expected. Which is true for every team in the regular season - everyone basically performed as expected so you have to look at the contribution of the best player compared to the next best player and that gave Cast the edge over any other forward.
In regards to defence men, I came into the discussion fully expecting to vote McWolf for most defensive and best overall. Only saw Kovalchuk on the ballot then which changed the Wylde for me and everyone else. Kovalchuk put up similar stats to McWolf on a much better team - I.e. they were not inflated by playing on a worse team. McWolf still had a solid all around game unlike Malenko who was very much a beneficiary of a high scoring Seattle.