Beyond Center Ice

 This is the most southern Cup Final in NHL History!  Vegas and Florida... who would've thought when the playoffs started? In this post, I am not going to make everything about advanced stats. You guys know what each team does, you guys know who's good and who's not. Let's just take a look at how we got here. Florida started these playoffs out as a massive underdog. They went down 3-1 to Boston, as I'm sure you know, and they came back. Boston had 3 chances to bury them, and should've knocked the Cats out in every single game. But they didn't. Then, this spiraled Florida as a superpower. The Leafs couldn't stop them, and the Canes, despite outplaying Florida in each game, couldn't beat Bob. Sergei Bobrovsky has been unstoppable since he came in to these playoffs, and Vegas needs to learn how to stop him. Or, Florida is lifting the cup.  Vegas started this playoffs out with a dominating series win in 5 games against an underdog that many thought could...

 It's a rematch of the 2020 West Finals! In that series, the Stars took it. Who takes it now... Once again, this playoff continues to surprise as each of these two teams were widely expected to be out in the 2nd round, but they prevailed. For Dallas, they had to fight a really tough to beat Kraken team that saw really good goaltending from Philip Grubauer. For the Knights, they had to face McDavid and Draisaitl, but they managed to absolutely break Stuart Skinner and outscore the Oilers, advancing here. As I said, this is a rematch of 2020's Bubble Conference Finals, and the Stars took it. The Golden Knights haven't been to the cup finals since their inaugural 2018 season, so these two teams are certainly used to the pressure. The two who aren't used to these big stages are the goalies. Adin Hill has had to take over the job after Brossoit went down in the middle of the Oilers series, and he has done fantastic. The timeline on Logan Thompson is still muddy, so it looks ...

 Here we go starting the Western Conference! Our first matchup: the Vegas Golden Knights vs the Winnipeg Jets! Vegas is the 1 seed in the West and widely considered one of the better teams in the entire NHL, while Winnipeg started out fantastic, then faltered down to almost falling out of the playoffs, before steadying the ship and clinching that WC spot with a few days to spare. This series is a rematch of the West Finals back in 2018, which the VGK took home en route to their Finals loss to the Capitals. The Jets would love to seek revenge - and as the underdog, it would be certainly something, but this may be the best possible matchup for Winnipeg. Certainly better than the Avs or Oilers... We'll start with the Underdog Jets this time. At a 52.35 G%, the Jets finish just 4 spots below Vegas, while they come in middle of the pack in xG%, again just 4 spots below VGK. They just miss out on a top 10 Corsi% at 11th with a 51.49, which is actually far ahead of Vegas. They've scor...