Great round 2. 3 of 4 series went 7 games. All game 7's won by the road team. Scoring first way more important than home ice it appears. 26 of 27 games the team scoring first won in round 2. That is crazy. Which leaves us with a great CF round. 3 original 6 teams, and LA in a WCF re-match. Cannot get much better than that. NY, Montreal, LA, Chicago. Here are my picks: I take the Rangers in 6. Could certainly see 7 as usual, but it would be so difficult for us to win a game 7 on a Saturday night in Montreal IMO, so I go 6. Look, this is a tossup series IMO. Slight edge to Montreal I believe, but close enough that it is essentially a tossup. I won't sit here and say I feel way overly confident we win this series, I don't (I was way more confident against Philly and Pitt), but I think it will be real close. A lot of low scoring games. Games that either team can win with a PPG or a break. Keys to me are how do we handle the city of Montreal, and how we handle Subban/the Montreal PP. We'll see. I take the Hawks in 7. Tough game 1 for the Kings flying from LA last night to Chicago today for an afternoon game tomorrow. If the Kings manage to steal game 1 that would be huge for them. Right now I look at the Kings down 3-0 to SJ. Down 3-2 to the Ducks. Don't believe they can afford to fall behind to the Hawks, so I take the Hawks in 7. What I do know is on paper we have two great series. The NHL must be crazy happy with this final 4. The 3 biggest US markets, and Montreal. Just wow. We are in for some great hockey the next 4 weeks.
