Anyway, here we are, folks. The quest for the Cup is down to two teams. Thankfully, one of them is the Blackhawks because otherwise these hockey posts would have stopped abruptly and you’d be without all this wonderful reading material. Luck you! Also, pretty excited that my mid-March Stanley Cup Final prediction hit. I’m not a very smart dude, so please, let me have this. I realize nailing a pick in mid-March essentially means nothing, but what do you want from me? I take my wins where I can get them.

 

Let’s take a look back at how we got here:

 

The Tampa Bay Lightning defeated:

 

Detroit in 7 (I predicted Lightning in 5)

Montreal in 6 (I predicted Montreal in 7)

New York in 7 (I predicted Lightning in 7)

 

YOUR CHICAGO BLACKHAWKS defeated:

 

Nashville in 6 (I predicted Hawks in 6)

Minnesota in 4 (which is still hilarious)

Anaheim in 7 (I predicted Hawks in 6)

 

So what can I say about this series that isn’t already being shouted by every other hockey writer (and “writer”, like me) out there? I’m honestly not even sure. All of this will be beaten into the ground by the time Game 1 rolls around (Wednesday, June 3rd) so let’s just touch on some important stuff and we’ll try to keep this relatively brief. I’m sure there are better articles posted today, you should leave yourself time to check those out too.

 

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Duncan Keith is a savage. My man is averaging 31:35 a game, which is just north of absurd and trending towards overkill. The craziest thing about it is he seems to be fine! For all the wear and tear on these guys, night in, night out, Keith looks like he would be out there for 40 minutes a game and he’d probably jog a bit after the final horn to keep his blood pumping. The guy is an absolute wonder to watch. He's been on the ice so much because of Rozsival's injury and Kimmo Timonen essentially being a corpse on skates.

 

David Rundblad has been playing a little, Kyle Cumiskey played a little more. It sounds like Trevor van Riemsdyk is making the trip to Tampa, but who knows how he'd fair if he dressed. He hasn't played an NHL game since November 16th, where he messed up his knee, then he played some rehab games in the AHL and broke his wrist. He is probably the very definition of rusty and he's a 23 year old rookie. Not a great sign.

 

Stamkos is back. 0 goals, 3 assists in the first round; 3 goals and 4 assists in the second round; 4 goals and 3 assists in the third round, I’d say he’s back. I’ve talked about him so much that I don’t want to tread that same ground, but he’s one of the best in the league and the Hawks need to keep him contained to have a shot. If he gets hot, which he very well could, this could be a bloodbath.

 

I talked about it a bit before, but is Ben Bishop that good? Hell, is Corey Crawford? This series could come down to two goalies that no one truly believes in, outside of their respective locker rooms. Bishop's save percentage is .920, Crawford's is .919. Bishop's goals against average is 2.15, Crawford's is 2.56. Bishop has 3 shutouts, Crawford has 1. Bishop faced the 3rd ranked 'goals scored in the regular season' team (Rangers), the 10th (Red Wings) and 20th (Montreal). Crawford faced the 11th (Ducks), 12th (Wild), 14th (Predators). So, pretty even. A little lean towards Bishop, but the consensus seems to be that the East just doesn't score goals like the West. I have no idea if that's necessarily true, but you hear it a lot. Essentially, I have no idea what to make of these two. Crawford has looked outstanding late in the series against a hungry, but choking Ducks team; Bishop looked great late in the series against a hungry, but offensively dead Rangers team. Tough call here.

 

Johnathan Toews and Patrick Kane have been teamed up with Brandon Saad in the last two games of the Ducks series and they looked unstoppable. There's been a whole lot of talk about “The Triplet” line of Tyler Johnson, Nikita Kucherov and Ondrej Palat, but they have absolutely nothing on the Toews, Kane and Saad line. Although, the Hawks did have a nightmare of a time with the “70’s Line” last year for L.A. Maybe having one hot line that is horribly, horribly, horribly named is the key to beating the Hawks in the playoffs. Anyway, Hawks coach Joel Quennville loves to mix up his lines whenever and wherever, so who knows how long Toews, Kane and Saad are a line. He does not care about my forced narrative about that line dominating.

 

Speaking of Q, he almost had an all-time mistake in the last series. The Hawks 3rd line looked pretty good for 3 games against Anaheim, but Game 3 went into triple OT, so Q decided to sit two guys. He chose Antoine Vermette (who scored the winning goal in triple OT) and Teuvo Teravainen. Two guys who made that third line of the Hawks so dangerous. I talked about Teuvo being a huge factor in the Wild series. Turns out, he's just been a huge factor ever since cracking the lineup *self back pat*. Q scratched them for game 4 and the Hawks looked awful. Q put them back in and we're seeing the Hawks play for the Cup. Talk about over coaching. He’s generally a pretty ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ type coach too. It was an odd decision that, luckily, didn’t come back to haunt him.

 

I don’t know much about Viktor Hedman, but apparently he’s the next Duncan Keith, so I thought I should mention him here in case he does something huge. This way, no one can come back and say, “You didn’t even say anything about Hedman and he had 45 points in the series! Loser!” I don’t need that, so “Hedman”. We good? Good.

 

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So what wins out? Who wins the series? Who gets to hoist the Cup? (Why all these questions?) I’m really not sure. My heart says Chicago. They’re fast, they’re coming off a series where they looked a little iffy, but turned it on in the crunch. They have 2 of the best two-way forwards in the game (Toews and Hossa); one of the most explosive players in the world in Kane; a sniper who desperately needs to catch fire in Patrick Sharp; 4 super solid D-men, but only 4 D-men worth noting; and a hot goalie who might be hot, but also might implode, who can really tell?

 

But I feel like my gut says Tampa. I don’t know near enough about Tampa to play this game with their team, but they have a similar goalie situation, Stamkos, “The Triplets”, Hedman, and they have a GIANT video screen in their arena. Also, they have Stamkos again. I walked into Amalie Arena in March telling my step father we might be witnessing the Stanley Cup champs play that night and maybe I was right, but …

 

Fuck Stamkos, fuck Bishop, fuck the “Triplets”. Most importantly, fuck the good people of Tampa Bay who get to golf year round.

 

Hawks in 6.