Second Round Matches in the East

All three division winners in the Eastern Conference have now been eliminated and that now makes the Pittsburgh Penguins the top seed in the East, gaining home-ice against the Montreal Canadiens, who played giant killers, by knocking off the Washington Capitals in seven games. There is very little rest for the wearied Canadiens, as they will immediately go into their second round series with Pittsburgh on Friday night, which will be shown on CBC in Canada and Versus in the USA (except for Sunday, an NBC telecast for Game Two).  In the pool, Sidney Crosby leads the way in scoring going into this series, he also leads all players in the pool, with 15 points.  The most popular player in this series is actually Evgeni Malkin, who has 21 selections, so he will be clutch for those teams trying to move out of the basement and pass the teams that had Capitals high up on their Sheet.  With only eight Habs taken in the entire pool, Marc-Andre Bergeron could be a wild card player, as he has five selections to his name, that could make some creeping up possible.

This match-up numbers-wise is all about the Penguins, but we have a real Cinderella story on our hands, so Pittsburgh should be very careful about who they are messing with.  A Penguins loss could be very devastating, as another 157 picks would be down the tubes and it would be a true upset kind of pool... in the Eastern Conference anyways.



In a battle of upsetting teams, the series between the Philadelphia Flyers and Boston Bruins has a very underdog feel to it. This series has really mixed up the East, but there are a good number of teams that were wise enough to see that both teams would be making it through to the second round, so they are in excellent shape for points going into this weekend's action.  If this is at all a long series, I would say that the teams with a large number of players left would have the advantage in the pool, because they should have some of these guys.  Brian Boucher leads this series coming in with 10 points in the pool, thus far.  Mike Richards is next on the list with 9 points, which I am thinking that this could be a big advantage for Philadelphia, not to mention the amount of rest the managed to get after beating New Jersey so early.  The Bruins are led by Patrice Bergeron, who had 6 points in the series against the Sabres, which is somewhat low, but the Bruins made it out of the round, so they can't complain.

The numbers match-up is quite low, so it should be a pretty good series.  The Flyers have an edge in picks of 57 to 46 and I don't believe there are too many teams with players from both sides, but I know there are a few.  The most popular player in this series is Kimmo Timonen, who has 14 selections to his name, but it might be the players with only five or less selections that may or may not make a difference.