The first round pairings have been determined. Rules are posted below. You must be 12 years of age or older to play.
East
Washington Capitals (1) VS Philadelphia Flyers (13)
Pittsburgh Penguins (4) VS New York Rangers (9)
Florida Panthers (6) VS New York Islanders (10)
Tampa Bay Lightning (12) VS Detroit Red Wings (15)
West
Dallas Stars (2) VS Minnesota Wild (17)
St. Louis Blues (3)VS Chicago Black Hawks(5)
Anaheim Ducks (7) VS Nashville Predators (14)
Los Angeles Kings (8) VS San Jose Sharks (11)
HOW TO PLAY:
Try to gather points by picking winners in an epic internal struggle between your head and your heart. It helps to not have a team in the mix, so you can remove your heart from the equation and make educated wild guesses. Don’t worry if you haven’t kept up with hockey this season, or even if you don’t know anything about hockey, because the only thing that’s certain in these games is that anything can and will happen before the Cup is awarded.
Those who are totally clueless as to the history of ice hockey are invited to Google Lord Stanley’s Cup. It is the oldest professional sports prize in modern times. There are even books written about its history. Some believe that the real Cup isn’t even allowed into public and speculate that there are multiple copies in existence.
POINTS SYSTEM:
I will post a list of pairings for each round. Participants will copy paste and post the list as well as type in a winner and how many of the scheduled 7 games they feel it will take for their pick to get to 4 wins.
The first round awards 1 point for picking a winner and 1 point for picking how many games it took the selected team to win the series. Max points for the first round is 16
The second round awards 2 points for picking a winner and 2 points for picking how many games it took the selected team to win the series. Max points for the second round is 16
The third round awards 4 points for picking a winner and 4 points for picking how many games it took the selected team to win the series. Max points for the third round is 16
The final awards 8 points for picking the winner and 8 points for picking how many games it took the selected team to win the series. Max points for the second round is 16
Whoever has the most points at the end wins. The prize this year is pride and satisfaction in knowing that your wild guesses were better than everyone else’s.
During the series you may feel to tease, mock and torment the other participants as their picks flounder and fail. This in no way makes you a bad person, or generates residual bad blood outside of this thread. We are big boys and ice hockey, outside of spleen rupturing, kidney bruising, rib cracking, tooth loosening hits is a gentleman’s sport not unlike chess or Scrabble.