The only Game Seven that would be more exciting than Friday night's affair to get into the Cup Finals, would be for winning the Stanley Cup itself. The Bruins have home-ice advantage tonight against the Lightning, as they play one more game to decide who goes on to play the Vancouver Canucks for the best trophy in professional sports. It's all or nothing as these two teams do battle and we have already seen what makes each team tick in order to win three games, the real test will be which team gets the opportunity to impose their will on the opposition in order to get a leg up in the deciding game.
These two teams have turned out to be so much alike in a lot of ways, that a lot of the same strategies need to be applied for a winning game plan. First off, it's seemingly all about the start... in four of the six games in this series, the opening goal has been scored in the first two minutes of the game. Okay, whoever scores first doesn't win all four games, but setting the tempo does go a long ways in this game. Second, the winning goalie will be the one who was focused for the better part of the game. Keeping the shots on net manageable early on will help the goalie get focused for the more important saves later on in the game. Finally, defensive systems in tact... the real discipline will be trying to keep the other team off the board. This has been a very high scoring series, which has helped the pool, but likely frustrated both coaches and goalies. Whichever team can stick to their defensive system and shut the opponent's top lines best, has the better chance at moving on.
So, now that we know the situation in the game, let's see what the top 10 in the hockey pool looks like...
| Tryst'n'Grant | Langdon River Dogs | All She Wrote | Superstar | Pucking Luck | Kalenab | seaherwet | Hollywoods Heroes | Granny Smith | Jack_Bit_Gary | |
| 275 points | -2 points | -15 | -23 | -24 | -24 | -25 | -28 | -28 | -29 | |
| Steven Stamkos (13) | x | |||||||||
| Martin St. Louis (14) | x | x | x | x | x | x | ||||
| Vincent Lecavalier (15) | x | x | x | x | x | |||||
| Steve Downie (17) | ||||||||||
| Simon Gagne (18) | x | x | x | |||||||
| Teddy Purcell (19) | x | x | x | x | ||||||
| Victor Hedman (20) | x | |||||||||
| Pavel Kubina (21) | x | |||||||||
| Eric Brewer (23) | x | x | x | x | x | |||||
| Dwayne Roloson (24) | x | x | ||||||||
| Patrice Bergeron (13) | x | x | ||||||||
| David Krejci (14) | x | x | x | |||||||
| Milan Lucic (15) | x | |||||||||
| Nathan Horton (16) | x | x | ||||||||
| Michael Ryder (18) | x | x | x | |||||||
| Brad Marchand (19) | x | x | ||||||||
| Tomas Kaberle (20) | x | x | ||||||||
| Zdeno Chara (21) | x | x | x | x | x | x | ||||
| Johnny Boychuk (23) | x | |||||||||
| Tim Thomas (24) | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x |
I'm sure there are a number of teams hoping for a high scoring game tonight, but only if it really favours their team in the pool, I'm sure. Frankly, high scoring or low scoring, as long as your players do what they have to in order to move on, you would applaud it.
The top 10 is well represented in net, as eight teams have Tim Thomas and two have Dwayne Roloson. A shutout in either direction can really turn the tides in the pool and give those teams a nice boost in to the Cup Final. You can generally determine who each team wants to win by the higher ranking players from their favourite team in the East. Tryst'n'Grant is banking on a Tampa win, while the Langdon River Dogs want a Boston win... and so on and so forth.
Game Seven will have a lot of poolies on the edge of their seats, with that last glimmer of hope for the money still twinkling in their eyes. Who's going to make it? Is there enough time to track down the top two teams? It's all very exciting.
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