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March to the Cup: Mario Lemieux Conference Finals voting

April 6, 2020, 9:36 AM ET [16 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.

We are now into the Conference Finals in March to the Cup. Today we will focus on the lone matchup left in the Mario Lemieux side of the bracket. We’ve got one game and it is a good one.

(3) Colorado Avalanche vs (7) Pittsburgh Penguins

Nate MacKinnon and his Colorado Avalanche are going to go up against Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins. Stakes are at an all-time high. The loser will have to buy lunch in Halifax.

MacKinnon is an unmistakable force of excellence. He was a Hart Trophy finalist in 2017-18. Sidney Crosby even in his advanced age was a runner up in 2015-16, 2017-18, and last year in 2018-19. They of course are not the only participants in this contest. There is plenty of talent to go around. There are few teams that can go toe to toe with either the Penguins or Avalanche with their forward depth. Both teams stand a gain a great scoring option with a return from injury. Jake Guentzel and Mikko Rantanen will be back in the lineup as well Nazem Kadri, Colin Wilson, and to a lesser extent Zach Aston-Reese, and Nick Bjugstad.

Defense is looking like a push. Kris Letang and Cale Makar are the standouts while Brian Dumoulin combining up with Letang make for the best pairing. After that we have Sam Girard and John Marino holding down a second pairing with Ian Cole on Colorado’s bottom pairing. Remember when Justin Schultz was good? It hasn’t been the case since Cole left. Correlation is not always causation, but Cole leaving and Johnson arriving certainly didn’t help his cause.

The goaltending favors the Avalanche when we are talking about the 2019-20 season. Philipp Grubauer and Pavel Francouz have been the better duo this year. Tristan Jarry was on fire early in the year and has leveled off (still fine, but not elite) and Matt Murray is a complete mixed bag. Goaltending is obviously volatile and nobody reading this (or writing it) can say with 100% certainty how goaltending will shake out in any given matchup. We just have to make the best predictions with the largest sample and I think it favors Colorado here.

Really close matchup. Would be cool to see a seven game series between these two teams. The Penguins have obliterated the voting like they did the competition in the 2016 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Will it continue? Lunch is on the line in Halifax, huge stakes.

You’ve got a couple days to vote. Who will be playing in the final?

(3) Colorado Avalanche vs (7) Pittsburgh Penguins
Colorado Avalanche
Pittsburgh Penguins
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