Beyond Center Ice

The President's Trophy winning, history making Boston Bruins start their playoff journey with the hot and ready Florida Panthers. The Bruins and Panthers are going to fight it out. As you probably know, the Boston Bruins were the best team in hockey and put up the best regular season in NHL history. They were clinched for the President's Trophy and the playoffs since March, and yet still dominated teams even when they were seemingly not putting 100% effort. The Panthers have been playing playoff hockey all season, as they have needed every bit of those 92 points with the Sabres and Pens finishing right on their tail. They were not clinched until after Game 81, which gave them just one game to get rested for this series. And man is it going to be a tough series. The Bruins are understandably heavy, HEAVY favorites to win this series, and it's up to Florida to prove them wrong. But before we get into all of that, let's see some stats for these teams: The Bruins had the be...

 With just 8 days left in the regular season, playoff spots and matchups are starting to get revealed as each days tick by. 12 teams have clinched, with at least one more on the way extremely soon. However, with the nature of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, 8 teams get knocked out just a couple short weeks after the start of the playoffs. Which teams will contend, and which teams are the pretenders that will fall short when it matters?  The Teams   As I said in the open, 12 teams have clinched. I will go over each of them briefly in this post and decide if they're contenders or pretenders. Though, the Seattle Kraken will be the 13th team on this list as they are all but clinched for at least a WC spot out there in the West. However, they will be the only WC team on this list because it is uncertain who will be the remaining 3 wild card spot. Now, without further ado, let's take a look at the teams! Seattle Kraken Starting from the bottom down, the Seattle Kraken are all but gua...