Hopefully all of my readers who enjoy fantasy hockey had a successful regular season and are primed and ready to take another stab at it in the playoff rounds.
There are tons of predictions already set in place throughout the wonderful hockey world, take each one you see with a grain of salt and come up with your own. From my experience there are two types of fantasy playoff hockey pools: the box pool and the brackets pool. I’ll explain how these types of pools are setup and how they work. Of course I will give my predictions for the playoffs, and who I think will win the cup.
Right from the get-go I’d like to take a quick look at the matchups.
Western Conference:
Dallas vs Minnesota St Louis vs Chicago Anaheim vs Nashville Los Angeles vs San Jose
Eastern Conference:
Florida vs New York Islanders Tampa Bay vs Detroit Washington vs Philadelphia Pittsburgh vs New York Rangers
I’m thrilled with these first round matchups and feel the West has the overall better teams, but after many grueling playoff games, who knows which team will stay healthy and consistently play a quality 200 foot game. We’ve seen years in the past where high scoring affairs take place (Pittsburgh vs Philadelphia), and the opposite with low scoring games, all ending in overtime or are right down to the wire. I could see the Detroit/Tampa series being very low scoring with the number of injuries on Tampa and the lack of offense that Detroit has had in the second half of the season.
With all of that being said, it’s the playoffs. Anything and everything can happen. For one, I can’t wait to see all of the hard hitting and intense effort put in each night by ‘playoff warriors’. There are always a few stand-out players during the playoffs that bring their game up to the next level, winning battles along the boards and bringing that electric spark to the team, which is enormous in the NHL playoffs.
Box pools:
These pools I find are the most common in the playoffs, anyone can play; and it’s simple. A number of quality players from each of the teams will be slotted into a box with each other. Usually you try to keep the quality of the players the same in each of the boxes. The host of the league will setup the boxes with forwards, defense and goaltenders. Each box will be worth the same in the end, and you have to pick the best performer from each box. For example: A goalie box with Fleury, Rinne, Lundqvist, Crawford and Dubnyk…you pick who wins the most games. Crosby, Ovechkin, Getzlaf, Toews, Datsyuk could be five forwards in a box, you have to pick the one who gets the most points.
The harder it is to pick the players in each box, the better. This makes it more competitive and reduces the odds of two people picking the same players throughout all of the boxes.
In the end, whoever picked the most winning players in each of the boxes will be the winner. A good tie breaker can be which conference wins the cup, and which team win the cup. That way you have a winner, as it’s obviously tricky picking who wins the cup. If the finalists both pick the same conference and neither picks the cup winner, than you can split the winnings accordingly.
Bracket pools:
This is about as simple as it gets! You look at the matchups and you start in the first round and pick who you think is going to win. Then you move onto the second round, pick your winners there and so on until you pick you Stanley Cup winner for 2015. Sounds easy, but it’s obviously tricky when picking your winner. Of course you have to complicate it a bit more tricky in case of a tie…again, very simple. Whoever you think is going to win the series; you must select how many games you think they will win the series in. It’s never easy predicting a sweep, but the brooms usually come out at some point during the playoffs!
My predictions for round 1:
Dallas vs Minnesota – Dallas in 5 St Louis vs Chicago – Chicago in 6 Anaheim vs Nashville – Anaheim in 5 Los Angeles vs San Jose – San Jose in 7 Florida vs New York Islanders – Florida in 6 Tampa Bay vs Detroit – Tampa Bay in 7 Washington vs Philadelphia – Philadelphia in 7 Pittsburgh vs New York Rangers – New York Rangers in 6
I predict the New York Rangers to win the Stanley Cup.
Best of luck to everyone!
Results:
First place in rotisserie First place in head to head Lost first round of HBSL playoffs Last place in keeper pool (as predicted – Matthews is mine)
I will give a breakdown of my teams in each of these pools, and I will have a blog fully dedicated to my 45 man keeper team and list a bundle of high quality prospects for those of you who are looking to stock up for the future.
Thanks for reading, enjoy the 2016 NHL playoffs!