Stanley Cup Playoff Pick'em 2010

[Ben Kenobi]

Obviously, the amount of fine points I don't know about hockey is legion. So pardon my stupid questions.

There are no stupid questions.

[Fake Boris]

Did the crowd cheer after every dive?

At some point, starting from the second half of the second period, yes. The cheering after every save was close to that of a regular season goal.

[Flubber]

OK

While I am a Montreal fan from waaay back, that game last nioght was one of the biggest examples of goaltender thievery I have EVER seen. Washington generally was on a completely different plateau compared to Montreal and Halak simply robbed them blind. Add on the fact that Varlamov was not great-- hell all 3 goals were fairly long shots and you are seeing how a team can be in a series solely through the influence of the keepers. Will Washington stick with Varlamov in game 7? Can Halak steal another one?? It seems unlikely Montreal will outplay Washington over the course of 60 minutes so that seems how they may win---- Wow

[Flubber]

On the pickem-- some things I noticed

-- quite a bunch right now in the standings-- I have 2 people with 13, 2 at 12, FIVE at 11 and FIVE more at 10

-- 2 people will get the Phoenix/detroit series exactly right regardless of who wins-- only one person could potentially get Montreal Washington exactly right and only if Washington wins



-- Ming wins the prize for getting points from every series thus far (but NONE exactly right)
-- Stuie (Philly )and Oncle Boris (Boston) win the prizes for being the only person to call those respective series exactly right and Oncle Boris gets a bonus mention for calling the Philly series win in conjunction with his Boston "exactly right"

-- Boston was the least predicted winner that won -- only two people called the win
Other unpopular predictions were Ottawa (1) Colorado (2), Montreal (2)-- both Montreal fans LOL!! , Nashville (3), Phoenix (3)

-- Through 6 series we have a 64% success rate in picking series winners. -- Our successful series winner prediction rates were

Pitt 95%
SJ 89%
Chi 84%
Van 68%
Philly 37%
Boston 11%

[Asher]

Just curious, how many points did you have me at?

[Flubber]

11
3 each for Pitt,SJ and Van with 2 for Chicago in 5 and zeros for your NJ and Buff picks

[Fake Boris]

Did the crowd cheer after every dive?

OK

While I am a Montreal fan from waaay back, that game last nioght was one of the biggest examples of goaltender thievery I have EVER seen. Washington generally was on a completely different plateau compared to Montreal and Halak simply robbed them blind. Add on the fact that Varlamov was not great-- hell all 3 goals were fairly long shots and you are seeing how a team can be in a series solely through the influence of the keepers. Will Washington stick with Varlamov in game 7? Can Halak steal another one?? It seems unlikely Montreal will outplay Washington over the course of 60 minutes so that seems how they may win---- Wow

I can't deny either that I've never seen goaltending thievery like that - hell, not even 1993 Patrick Roy.

But I'm still not so pessimistic.

There have been only 2 games out of 6 where Montreal was severely outshot. In the other games, it ended up being stuff like 43-37 or 38-28, which is not *that* bad. (Washington is playing open, so they do allow a lot of shots). And our 6-3 loss was still a 38-39 game.

Halak can't steal every game, but he's arguably in the top 5 of NHL goaltending since January. Assuming standard Halak performance and standard Varlamov performance, we'd have a shot if we made the next game, say, 25-35 or 30-40.

Also Washington has been playing very nervously in the last two games - while they did bombard us, they took tons of wrong decisions and didn't play well at all in their zone (when we reached it, that is).

We'll see what happens. Even if you weren't a Habs fan, it would be hard not to cheer for the worst playoff team having a shot at eliminating the best one.

[-Jrabbit]

Even if you weren't a Habs fan, it would be hard not to cheer for the worst playoff team having a shot at eliminating the best one.

True dat.

[notyoueither]

Disappointing game 7 between Detroit and Phoenix.

[Ming]

Yeah... it was over quick with none of the suspense you would normally get for a game 7.

[Flubber]

Disappointing game 7 between Detroit and Phoenix.

YUp

Phoenix actually did better than I thought in the series though. They were a bit of a wildcard coming in since all season their whole has been greater than the sum of their parts. PLus Bryzgalov was often amazing-- I just thought that overall Detroit was too good and in the end was not shocked at the result.

So in the west EVERY series goes as was predicted by the majority. The East has two upsets already but if Washington loses to Montreal I think that would rank as the biggest upset of them all.

[notyoueither]

Rumour is that the second round will start tomorrow. Be ready with your picks once we know the winner of Was-Mon.

[Ben Kenobi]

Well we can't exactly predict series we don't know who is playing!

Vancouver over Chicago in 6
Detroit over San Jose in 6

Pittsburgh over Montreal in 4
Boston over Philly in 7

[Flubber]

Hmm- since 16 people correctly picked Detroit we are now picking at about 66.6% accuracy for series winners. 17 of 19 have selected Washington.

The standings remain tightly bunched-- I guess no surprise when there was so much commonality in our picks. I expect we will see far less consensus picks in round 2

[Guynemer]

Watching this Game Seven, I'm impressed by two things:

How out of sync Les Habs have made the Caps look, and

How littered this series is with my fellow Wolverines. Knuble, Morrison, Cammellari... I think I heard one other name, but I've forgotten it. Too bad the Stars didn't trade Turco to one of these teams.