The Detroit Red Wings came up just short in their bid to dig their way out of a 3-0 hole in their Stanley Cup playoff series against San Jose, losing a 3-2 decision in Game Seven last night. The Conference Final matchups are now set, and here are my picks for those series:
Tampa Bay vs. Boston – the Lightning were fortunate to get to play the Penguins minus Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, and took advantage to advance to this point. I had picked Pittsburgh to win the series based on a goaltending advantage, but Tampa’s 41 year old veteran Dwayne Roloson did a great job for his team. He now will battle Boston’s Tim Thomas, probably the best goalie left in the NHL’s final four. I have to go with Boston to win this series, since the Bruins are a more experienced, more talented and more physical team. It also helps that they now have the added confidence boost from avenging their playoff collapse against the Flyers last season. Nathan Horton has become a playoff scoring hero for them, and defenseman Zdeno Chara sets a physical tone that the Bolts won’t be able to match.
Vancouver vs. San Jose – the Sharks will certainly be more worn down physically than the well-rested Canucks, and in my mind their goalie, Antti Niemi, is better than the inconsistent Roberto Luongo. Both of these teams blew 3-0 series leads this year and survived game sevens to advance this far, so neither has a particularly strong killer instinct. I’ll pick the Canucks to win a seven game series, with the assumption that the Sedin brothers will raise their games and be factors offensively. Both of these teams have a recent history of being regular season juggernauts who come up small at playoff time, so it’ll be interesting to see which one shakes that label and moves on to the finals.
Margaret
May 17, 2011 at 3:31 pm
How odd it would be to have two warm weather cities in the Stanley Cup finals. What would Lord Stanley think of that?