Blackhawks Versus Lightning, Playoff Pool Preview

The time has arrived.  We've finally made it to the Stanley Cup Finals, where we'll see the Chicago Blackhawks, the young, yet remarkably veteran Western Conference team, taking on the fresh faces of the Tampa Bay Lightning, who, as a whole, are a little bit green to the notion of the Cup Finals, but make up for it with their moxie.

Having thought about the combatants in this series, it's really easy to point at the Blackhawks and say, "these guys will walk away with this series."  The thought has certainly passed through my mind a number of times, but it's the path that the Lightning took to get to these Finals, which has me reconsidering that notion most often.

The Detroit Red Wings are not the same team that they once were, but even with Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg kicking around, they are a team to be reckoned with and they took the Lightning to seven games and that was a good series.  Next, the Lightning had a date with Carey Price and the Canadiens, which was an interesting series, as the Habs were not going away quietly, even down 3-0 in the series, taking the whole thing to six games.  In the Conference Finals, not only did the Bolts face a top end goalie in Henrik Lundqvist, they also faced off against, what I think is, the best top six defense in the NHL in these playoffs and were able to play right through them, not to mention shut down a very potent offense for four games as well.

The Blackhawks have the best playoff duo in the game, thanks to their experience, in Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, they have workhorses on defense, especially Duncan Keith and their number one goalie, Corey Crawford, has been there before and won some very important games in his career.  Experience fuels their reputation and their reputation is a winning one and it's very hard to escape.

In order to get that winning reputation, you have to win and the Lightning have the players and have the drive to earn that reputation and it all starts with winning once.  The top end draw of Steven Stamkos, the scoring support from the triplets (Tyler Johnson, Nikita Kucherov and Ondrej Palat), a steady number one defender in Victor Hedman and a mammoth of a goalie in Ben Bishop.

I don't know how you can count either team out of this series, but at the same time, this series' margin of error in any game is razor thin and each team has been known to fall off, due to their own errors, already in these playoffs.  It will be a matter of who can play the most mistake-free hockey, which to me, says that this series can go four games, as quickly as it can go seven.

This series will be a cliche machine and to try and call it based on what we've seen already is tough.  I think we can safely say that no matter the result, we're in for an entertaining Finals.

What does this mean for the hockey pool, you ask?  Well, I've included the top five teams in the table below and I think we have some certainties in this one.

	Fontanna	Thor	Jesse	Sean	Stacey
Points	256	242	240	232	226
			Jonathan Toews	Jonathan Toews
	Marian Hossa	Marian Hossa
	Patrick Sharp				Patrick Sharp
	Patrick Kane	Patrick Kane	Patrick Kane	Patrick Kane	Patrick Kane
		Niklas Hjalmarsson			Niklas Hjalmarsson
			Corey Crawford	Corey Crawford
		Steven Stamkos	Steven Stamkos		Steven Stamkos
	Tyler Johnson
	Nikita Kucherov		Nikita Kucherov	Nikita Kucherov
	Ondrej Palat				Ondrej Palat
		Victor Hedman
			Anton Stralman	Anton Stralman	Anton Stralman
		Ben Bishop

Fontanna will win this pool, as 14 points ahead of 2nd place and having two players the same says that there are four differences and that may not be enough, unless this series scores a butt-load of goals.

Sean, 8 points back of 3rd place, cannot catch Jesse and since he has better Blackhawks than Stacey, he should be safe in 4th place, unless Stacey's Lightning players take off, but I would think that Palat and Kucherov would almost cancel each other out.

This leaves the race for 2nd place and it really is interesting.  Thor has Bishop in the East, while Jesse has Crawford in the West and the 2-point margin here is where the goaltending will be the biggest factor.  You strike Kane and Stamkos from the conversation, leaving very little between these two teams.  This will be where the race gets interesting and it will be the main focus of the blog posts from here on in.

Stuart was the only pool team that has both Crawford & Bishop, but is in 13th, 27 points back of the money, but is certainly worth mentioning here.

There you have it.  What should prove to be a very, very interesting Cup Finals.