Only official results matter. Just like you could say Yu Na maybe deserved the gold in 2014 (and yes I have said that as practically everyone else on the planet who saw the event did), you could say Michelle maybe deserved the gold in both 1998 and 2002, deserved the gold at the 1995 and 2004 worlds, and it could go on forever. Michelle has had as many controversial defeats as Yu Na, or more, so in the end comparing the two it is irrelevant. Michelle's career is now much better, as is her skating.
I watched the event and don't think she deserved the Gold in Sochi. Most people who are content with the results are also content to keep their mouths shut. The discontent are usually have a 100x higher chance of complaining out loud than the content. Think about that
Kwan has a good argument for winning in 1998. She only Flutzed once and her program was an artistic masterpiece back then. The quality in basic skating was a bigger contrast between Kwan and Lipinski in 1998 than Kim and Sotnikova in 2014. Kwan had decent spins back then that were competitive with Tara's (Tara's Layback and Sit were better, Kwan's Camel and Combos were better. Both had good spirals and extension. Tara was faster in Nagano, noticeably. Tara's program was more difficult, though. The disparity in difficulty was similar to Sotnikova vs. Kim in Sochi, actually.
I think people overrate 3-3's in ladies skating. It isn't about the combos you do; there is no "bonus" for doing a 3-3. The only phase of the competition where the 3-3s are decisive is the Short Program, since there is only one combination jump pass and the difference between a double and triple is large point-wise. However doing a Lutz/Flip combo may not be worth it if you have amazing toe loops and can combo them really well... They will still score well as a combination due to GOE. In the FS, it's about the # of triples you do, their distribution, and the total BV of the program. As long as you perform them well, your GOEs will be good. I'm pretty sure Tara's 3-3 was in the second half of her program, though, which is probably why the judges always seemed to go GaGa over it... Never mind, she didn't UR a single jump (just the Salchow was fishy, since it was landed with no speed, but it was rotated).
For example, if Yuna did a 3Lz-2T and then a 3S-3T her BV would be the same as if the back ends were switched.
Kwan received some significant home town advantage in the SP in 2002. She should have been second in the SP. Clean Kwan was like 0 or 10 vs Slutskaya (not literally, but just to get the point across) in the SP going into SLC, and all of a sudden Kwan with a forward/scratchy/wonky flip solo jump is beating Slutskaya's technical clinic. It was laughable (she usually could win with her second mark and a clean program in the FS so I'm not sure why the judges had to take it that far...). The judging was all over the place at that competition and Russia did file a protest but they lost that battle. However, I didn't hear anyone complaining about the marks she received there... Shocker! Those Olympics were, obviously, in the USA.
Hughes won because she was clean. Yes, there were more than a couple UR'd jumps in there, the posture wasn't the best, and she could Flutz with the best of them, but that was 6.0. That judging system had different focuses than IJS.
If it was 6.0, Vancouver would have gone completely different than it did. Asada wouldn't have been forced to do 3 Triple Axels because she would have been able to do 2 Lutzes instead. There were no edge calls there and top skaters were almost never penalized for Flutz (ask Yamaguchi) unless they were both from the same country and the judges wanted a reason to rank one over the other. This actually still happens in IJS, and is why the scores and protocols from National championships are usually not reliable. A lot of coaches from the 6.0 era have been interviewed and pretty much said "who cares if the Lutz is off an outside or inside edge?!" That was status quo back then...
