The Stanley Cup Final has wrapped up and we go deep on the series betwen the Golden Knights and the Panthers. We touch on the dominance Vegas exerted in the series and dig into Jonathan Marchessault’s Conn Smythe winning performance.
We also tackle the report that Victor Olofsson expects to be traded this offseason. We discuss the significance of the report and select a few teams which we feel would be good fits for him in a trade.
We couldn’t catch up on the latest exploits for the Rochester Americans last week, so we devoted time this week to their impressive run in the Calder Cup playoffs. The Amerks have reached the Eastern Conference Final and are in a tough battle with the Hershey Bears. We run though some of the most notable contributors for the team and even look ahead to how the likes of Ryan Johnson and Nikita Novikov will make an impact in Rochester in 2023-24.
This week also includes a brief preview of the Stanley Cup Final between the Vegas Golden Knights and the Florida Panthers. We offer up our thoughts on some of the most notable storylines of the series and provide our predictions for this year’s Final.
With the Stanley Cup Final poised to begin this weekend, I’ll take one final stab at prognosticating who may win the final series of the 2011-12 NHL season. I suffered through an up-and-down run of picking this year’s series and stand at 5-8 entering the Finals.
This year pits a pair of unexpected opponents as neither entered the playoffs as a sexy pick to be playing for the Cup. While the Kings have been an annual choice for pre-season success, they had an underwhelming regular season and nosed their way into the playoffs. The Devils were quiet for most of the year and are just now getting fully healthy. While their aging goaltender was average in the regular season, he has been stellar in the playoffs.
Somewhat ironically, the Devils enter this series as the more potent scoring team as the Kings were the team whose blanketing defense helped them through the regular season. However, Los Angeles has played David to the NHL’s Goliath this spring, knocking off the top three seeds out west thanks to terrific goaltending and a recent injection of offense.
This may serve to be a very entertaining Cup Final, and has the potential to make a major impact on the national sports scene with LA as part of the series. While the NHL and NBC didn’t get their silver platter matchup of the Rangers and Kings, the Devils seem to be slowly reminding people in the tri-state area that hockey is indeed a serious sport. Continue reading
Two in the Box 