Thursday, April 12, 2018

Welcome to the 2018 Playoff Pool

A hearty welcome, one and all, to the 2018 Stanley Cup Playoffs hockey pool... boy, you take a year off and everyone leaves ya, eh? It's a thin pool this year, after taking a year off, the pool only managed to return with 23 teams, less than half of the participation of the 2016 pool.  I guess that should be expected.

I've weeded out the weaklings, right?  Right.

Winnipeg, Tampa Bay and Nashville are your favourite teams in the pool, all finished with over 60 selections.  The maximum amount of selections any one team could have this year is 69 and Winnipeg finished with 67 to lead the way.  Did a couple people forget to take a Jets player or what?

New Jersey and Colorado are definitely not supposed to make it out of the first round.  The Devils have five selections to their name and the Avalanche only have three.

Jets forward Patrik Laine was this year's favourite pick... the Box 3 forward was taken 13 times to lead all players.  Mark Scheifele of the Jets, Sidney Crosby of the Penguins and Andrei Vasilevskiy of the Lightning were also popular, each taken 12 times.

Two boxes on the sheet had at least one selection for all eight players, Boxes 21 and 22, Eastern Conference defensemen.  With that being said, that's 23 teams in the pool... no duplicates!  It's hardly as impressive this year, given that there are less teams, but we're still without a duplicate in many, many years.

So, 23 teams... $230 pot... winner take all!  That's the plan.  Good luck everyone!

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