Road to Stanley Classic

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May 26: Stanley Cup Finals are set! I was waiting and waiting on this update. The Senators got smoked in Game 5, tying the series in Game 6 and double overtime in Game 7, finally giving the series win to the Penguins. Over in the west, long odds and not picked very much, Nashville Predators, dust off the Ducks in 6 games. Now it is Preds vs. Pens for the Cup!

In our pool, Ditka continues to hold onto 1st place by a good margin and has the Pens winning it all. Then JERJER #2, bugeye #2 are in 2nd and 3rd and almost all-in on points. Alex_Scott is in 4th and pulling for a Predators win in the Cup Finals. Behind by 34 points, he probably doesn't catch Ditka even if the Preds win.

Enjoy the Finals everyone!
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May 17: Playoffs are rolling right along with two good series before the Finals. Predictions at this point? I know, I should have asked earlier, but I am going Senators-Predators with Preds winning the Cup. John Gibson went up as our Facebook cover jinx candidate. Ditka is still winning the pool but Caccatorini is closing the gap. And hey, Mike Fisher almost scored last night! So close! Penguins-Senators Game 3 tonight. I heard a Toronto sports radio promo this morning pointing out either Dion Phaneuf or Phil Kessel will be in the Finals. Obvious but pretty funny poke at Leafs fans.
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May 11: And then there were four! Are you ready for Round 3, Conference Finals? John Shannon on the FAN 590 predicted Penguins over Capitals yesterday saying will over skill, and it sure was. They fought and clawed for that win, and Marc-Andre Fleury was impressive. Now the Pens face the Senators. I did stay up for the Oilers-Ducks to be somewhat disappointed with a 2-1 Oilers loss. Ducks advance to face the Predators, and that starts Friday.

In our pool, Ditka has a nice lead but needs the Pens to win or Ducks to lose to hold off Cacciatorini #2. D has Crosby, Malkin and Karlsson still playing while C has Getzlaf, Kesler and ... well, we think Fisher is playing but it is hard to tell. Our current top 5 all have one of Pens or Ducks, but not both. 7th place Alex_Scott has the Preds this round and the Cup Final winner, so he is the wild-card in this whole thing.

Good luck to those of you still in the running, and enjoy the hockey!
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May 9: Ottawa wins! Not many saw that coming, but they advance to the Conference Finals to face the winner of Pittsburgh-Washington. Over in the West, Nashville continues to wait for the winner of Edmonton-Anaheim. Two game 7s on tap for Wednesday night. I am definitely settling in to watch both of those games, cheering for the Pens and Oilers!
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May 6: I thought we might be handing out our first Round 2 series points last night but the Blues extend it against the Predators. And oh what happened to those upstart Oilers? Three losses in a row including 6 points from Ryan Getzlaf in the last two give the Ducks a 3-2 lead in their series. Rangers and Senators are in a best of three starting this afternoon. Maybe the Pens, sans Sidney Crosby (probably?), can finish off the Capitals tonight.
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May 1: Little bump in the road for Edmonton last night losing 6-3 to the Ducks. Hey, we don't want this to be too easy for the upstarts. Ducks are still a hell of a team. The Preds sort of steamrolled the Blues even though the score wasn't that lopsided. Calling it now, Preds are going to take that series. Over in the East, Capitals are in trouble. They are what they've always been. Funny how the Senators were the team everyone wanted to play heading into the playoffs. That was without Karlsson, obviously a huge difference maker, and others. They are looking sharp.
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Apr 27: Holy dyslexia Batman! I don't know how I misread the schedule to completely flip Wednesday night versus Thursday night. Western Conference was last night, Eastern tonight. Anyway, Preds and Oilers each start round 2 with a win. We have 5 entries who earned 4 points thanks to Leon Draisaitl. P.K. Subban had 3 points to boost the Preds but no one had him in the pool.
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Apr 26: Round 2! Tonight we've got Penguins at Capitals and Rangers at Senators. Tomorrow Oilers at Ducks, Predators at Blues. NHL, couldn't we have one Eastern, one Western tonight and the others tomorrow, to better balance the TV schedule?
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Apr 23: Three series decided yesterday! All of a sudden Round 1 is coming to a close rather quickly. Blues, Rangers and Oilers are through, sending the Wild, Canadiens and Sharks packing. Without running the numbers, more people picked each of the Wild and Canadiens. The Oilers-Sharks split looked pretty even. Sharks did go to the Cup Finals last year, but there are likely many an Oilers bandwagon jumper-on thanks to that McDavid guy you may have heard of. At any rate, a lot of red x marks are filling the board. The less of those you have in columns 2, 3 and 4 of your picks, the better off you are going forward.

Leafs and Bruins trying to stay alive tonight in the final two series to be decided. It would be pretty odd to not have a single Game 7 with how many close games we've had these playoffs, so come on Leafs, force a Game 7!

Did everyone get the results update email Saturday morning? First time I've done that. If you didn't receive it, then check your member account you have "Pick Reminders" checked to receive, or email me. If you did receive it and the results didn't display right, then please forward me the email. I plan to send these updates once a week going forward. Thanks!
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I moved all entries that were still unpaid (except mine), here: https://www.myofficepool.ca/hockey/playoffs/results.php?p=520
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Apr 20: Our first series points! Anaheim sweeps Calgary, which pushes MisterO into 1st place while previous first place Ditka (who had Calgary) falls all the way down to 7th. Heck Ditka, even member goflames didn't pick the Flames. Minnesota was also on the brink last night but got a game on St. Louis to extend that series.

Pittsburgh and Nashville can wrap things up tonight in their respective series which will cause another big shakeup of the leader board. A lot of Chicago Black Hawks picks could mean a lot of red x's, coming soon.
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Apr 17: Quite the first few days of the NHL Playoffs! Some sweet overtime every night. The Black Hawks haven't scored yet. That one is unbelievable. Oilers shut out the Sharks two straight games. Blues up 3-0 on the Wild ready to finish them off. Gotta love the first round!

In terms of our pool, we obviously had many more people join this pool with little to no intention of paying their entry fee, which is unfortunate for me. As of today those entries do not accumulate points so our rankings look proper just among our paid entries. There are still a few spots left to get us to 58 paid entries and I will accept payment for any of the existing unpaid for a few more days to get us there.

Now sit back, relax (as relaxing as edge of your seat action is relaxing) and enjoy the rest of the playoffs! Thanks for playing and good luck!
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Stanley Cup Playoffs, baby! This is our $20 entry public pool with prizes 1st Place: $550, 2nd: $250, 3rd: $125, 4th: $50 and 5th: $25 credit to future pool. The pool is limited to 58 entries. The first 58 paid entries are in the pool. Here is last year's pool.

Playoffs start Wednesday but our entry deadline is Friday at 7:00pm Eastern. Enter now, you can change your picks any time up to the entry deadline. Good luck and Go Leafs!