Heh, my picks failed for this round failed, horribly.
1/4
Next round i'm taking:
Boston > Tampa Bay in 7
Vancouver > San Jose in 7
Yeah I was only 2/4 so don't feel bad. Although 3 of the 4 teams left are in my original top 5 when the playoffs started (minus washington and nashville).
All I can say for sure if that I think Vancouver will beat San Jose, it seems like San Jose suffers from lag spikes where they sit back and relax. Vancouver has too much talent whereas SJ could get away from it vs a hobbled Detroit.
Boston vs Tampa is close but I'm going with Tampa for a couple reasons: Boston has one of their cannons out with a mild concussion, leading scorer Bergeron. While one offensive player doesn't usually tip the scale, he just adds a ton of firepower with that 105mph shot that they're not going to get from Chris Kelly. Also, after listening to Steve Yzerman this morning, he did mention the work ethic factor and how that organization strives to only get high work ethic players. It shows, Tampa makes up for a lot of its shortcomings with pedal to the metal effort and a good example was that team not letting up on Pitt and Wash when they had the lead. They seemed to get even better when leading, which Boston has shown flashes of. However, I'm still not convinced that a team like Boston can go the distance with such an anemic PP, especially w/out Bergeron. So giving the edge to Tampa in this one.