The 2018 Stanley Cup playoffs have now been dwindled down to the conference finals. Two major contenders have already been eliminated, the Pittsburgh Penguins won’t get to pick up the coveted trophy for the third year in the row and last year’s finalists, the Nashville Predators, were taken to the task by the Winnipeg Jets in the second round.
The final four are the Jets and the groundbreaking Las Vegas Golden Knights in the west, and the Washington Capitals versus the Tampa Bay Lightning in the east.
It will be a special last two rounds, especially if the Lightning is knocked out by the Capitals. Either way, a team who hasn’t won the cup in the last ten years, will lift Lord Stanley. If the Lightning does get knocked out, one of the three teams left can win the cup for the first time in franchise history.
If it were to be the Golden Knights, it would be the first time an expansion team in the modern NHL would win a cup in their first year of play.
Still early in the series, it’s hard to pick out who has the upper hand.
The east may be a little easier to figure out. The Capitals won the first two games against the Florida-based team 4-2 and 6-2 in Tampa Bay. However, on May 15 the Lightning beat the Capitals in Washington 4-2 and will play again on May 17.
Both teams have won their division’s titles and Evgeny Kuznetsov has been a force to be reckoned with, scoring 20 points and could likely end up the highest scoring player in the playoffs now that Jake Guentzel (21 points) and Sidney Crosby (21 points) of the Penguins are now golfing.
Alexander Ovechkin is also having one of his best playoff runs, scoring 19 points and could beat his career best of 21 in the 2008-09 season.
The Winnipeg and Vegas series is tied at one as of May 14 and scorelines have been pretty similar with no real series defining moments so far.
However, the Jets have been getting better and better each series and this could be the year Mark Scheifele becomes a breakout star or the year where 31-year-old captain Blake Wheeler shows the world he’s been quietly one of the best players in the league.
Vegas though has been redefining the league and has stomped their way into the limelight. They established several expansion team records for wins in a debut season beating the benchmark of 34 wins in only 50 games and becoming the first expansion team in all four major North American sports to win a divisional title in their first year.
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