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March to the Cup: Mario Lemieux Division semi-finals RESULTS

March 30, 2020, 10:22 AM ET [9 Comments]
Ryan Wilson
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
March to the Cup is where you will vote on hypothetical playoff matchups in a bracket style setup mimicking the NCAA basketball tournaments. Here is the setup.

I’m going to seed all 31 teams based on the current overall standings with one play in game because of the odd number of teams. You will have a chance to vote on who you think should win the matchup. I’ll give some brief overviews and you’ll use those and your own intuition to make your selections. The results will be hidden until the next blog when the results are revealed. We will go round by round until we have a winner. Who knows? Maybe our selection will be the only winner this season.

This is all hypothetical. However you want to analyze things, go for it. If you want to assume every team has full health, go for it. Anything goes in the Coronavirus era of hypothetical playoff hockey.


The results are in and we have ourselves the Conference semi final matchups for the Mario Lemieux Division. Here are the results

(2) St. Louis Blues vs (7) Pittsburgh Penguins



Yeah… So it is going to be an uphill battle to beat the Penguins in this thing. I thought the voting would be a little closer. I voted for… the St. Louis Blues. Matt Murray has been wildly inconsistent and Tristan Jarry has cooled off quite a bit (only .901 in 2020). The teams are fairly even, but I couldn’t get around the goaltending part of it. Even Jake Allen has played better than both Penguins goalies this year (which includes Jarry’s great start and middle)

(3) Colorado Avalanche vs (11) Carolina Hurricanes



I also thought this one would be closer. I really like the Hurricanes. I also really really like Nate MacKinnon and Cale Makar so my vote went to the more dynamic players and the better goaltending.

It looks like we are finally going to get a Penguins Avalanche series, albeit 24 years too late. Thanks Florida your lame ass trapping and rats were definitely more entertaining than a Penguins (Lemieux, Jagr, Francis) Avalanche (Sakic, Forsberg, Roy) Stanley Cup Final.



It was also really cool that you advancing convinced Mario Lemieux what a garage league the NHL was and led to his early retirement. Good showing, Panthers.

Here is an updated bracket. We are getting towards the end.



Tomorrow you can vote on the semifinals of the Jaromir Jagr bracket.

Thanks for reading!
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