Old Stuff

[Shaiza]

East
#1 Pittsburgh Penguins def. #8 Tampa Bay Lighting (19-1)
#2 Boston Bruins def. #7 Winnipeg Jets (12-8)
#3 Florida Panthers def. #6 Toronto Maple Leafs (13-9)
#5 New York Rangers def. #4 Philadelphia Flyers (16-5)

West
#1 Vancouver Canucks def. #8 Minnesota Wild (20-1)
#2 Los Angeles Kings def. #7 Anaheim Ducks (19-0)
#3 St. Louis Blues def. #6 San Jose Sharks (15-5)
#4 Detroit Red Wings def. #5 Chicago Blackhawks (12-8)



All higher seeds have the home ice advantage.

Eastern Conference Semi-Finals:

5. New York Rangers vs. 1. Pittsburgh Penguins

3. Florida Panthers vs. 2. Boston Bruins


Western Conference Semi-Finals:

4. Detroit Red Wings vs. 1. Vancouver Canucks

3. St. Louis Blues vs. 2. Los Angeles Kings

Voting link: https://qtrial.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_esY4Pg5C0B0iWq1

[Shaiza]

Discuss it here.

[Shaiza]

Discuss it here.

[Shaiza]

100% serious, I totally saw that coming after I typed it.

[Shaiza]

Penguins vs. Rangers is an excellent match up.

[McJoe]

I had a few upsets in the first round. I'm actually really surprised the Panthers beat out the Leafs with the name value that the Leafs have. I voted for the Leafs because I think they are slightly better but even not seeing that, I'm surprised they didn't win because they have a HUGE name value advantage which is usually pretty big in these things. Staal and Kessel are better than any player on the Panthers. I'm not really surprised I guess because I saw them as really close either way but I thought the name value that the Leafs had would win it for them.

I also had the Rangers and Hawks winning as upsets.

Rangers and Pens is a CRAZY matchup in the second round. Like Stanley Cup level crazy. 2 of the 3 best teams in this thing IMO with the Canucks as the 3rd in that group. If it isn't the Nucks with 1 of those other 2 teams in the final, I'll be surprised...

[tomsa592]

Damn well fought Grk.

[Shaiza]

The faster we get people to vote, the faster we can keep this thing moving!

[Killerjug]

Shutout ouch

[joeyc77]

Damn...lost a close one. Congrats to the Red Wings on winning a hard fought battle. Thanls to everyone who voted for me. I've really enjoyed the league.

[GrkGawdofWalkz]

Damn well fought Grk.

Sorry dude, you'll get there. I just really had a tough team to go up against. Now Shaiza. Going to be interesting. All I can say is who knows. My Blues have the stuff to upend the former champs whether anyone thinks so or not.

[RedWings13]

Damn...lost a close one. Congrats to the Red Wings on winning a hard fought battle. Thanls to everyone who voted for me. I've really enjoyed the league.

Thanks. Hope to see u In the next games.

Now on to face Vancouver. This should be a tough one but I think we can pull off the upset here.

[RedWings13]

Canucks Vs. Red Wings

I'm on my phone so I'm not going to go through line by line like I did last time. I will make a few points though. Good luck to the Canucks.

The Canucks offense is absolutely elite, not going to deny that. It's probably the best in this besides maybe edmonton's. Our offense isn't far behind at all though. We have a much inproved first line from last year with datsyuk having a 35 goal scorer on his right instead of the basically useless Bertuzzi. I don't think it's out of the question Ryder hits 40 with Datsyuk. Datsyuk is on a completely different level than Ribeiro. Franzen was already a 30 goal a year guy. Now that he's not the only shooting option on that line 35 - 40 is definitely possible. Our second line is also really good. Zetterberg is much better than Kesler who's really only had two good years in his career. Eberle was near a ppg last year but pominville wasnt far behind that. Pominville is also playing with Zetterberg now instead of Roy so he could easily produce a lot more. Eberle is better than Nyquist. No way I can deny or argue that. His top six is probably better, I just don't think ours is far behind at all.

On defense we have a huge advantage both offensively and defensively. Suter and kronwall is a much better pair than Hamhuis and Bieska. Both of my players are better than his here. Our second pair is also better than his second pair. Beauchemin is better defensively than both of them. Edler is a good player but Pitkanen only played 30 games last year and consistently misses 10-20 games a year. He almost never gets even close to a full regular season. I just don't see him being able to stay healthy in the much more physical playoffs especially after missing more than half the season last year. When/if he goes down who takes his spot? I'm going to assume it would be Salo who is also made of glass. Between the two you can almost guarantee one will be injured and there is no seventh dman shown. Regardless of injuries I would still take our third pairing over Vancouver's. They have two third pairing guys there, which is fine, but I don't. Our third pairing consists of Quincey and Butler who are both capable of being in our top 4, especially Quincey. Our defense from top to bottom is much better than Vancouver's. We have the better defensemen on every pairing and we don't have the huge injury concerns that Vancouver has with Pitkanen and Salo.

In goal he has Luongo and I have Howard. I'm not going to call Luongo a choker because he really isn't outside of a couple games in the finals. Regardless, for both goalies the teams in front of them played awful when they lost. I don't really see either team having an advantage here.

So Vancouver has a slightly better top six and we have a much better defense. The last two years great defensive teams have won the Cup with Boston and LA. Especially this year where LA, New Jersey, New York, and Phoenix were the top 4 teams.

[blujaysrock]

Damn...lost a close one. Congrats to the Red Wings on winning a hard fought battle. Thanls to everyone who voted for me. I've really enjoyed the league.

Hope to see you back. You were a great guy to deal with and you built a nice team. Always nice to see.

[Shaiza]

Great job to those that got eliminated. Awesome job.

Guys keep the voting going! It takes literally 10 minutes to look over the teams and vote. The faster we get this done the faster we can get to Best GM and Best Future!