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Pickin’ Stanley Cup Winners With Copper And Blue

The Stanley Cup Finals begin tonight. See who our staff picked to win it all.

By Jeff Chapman
2020 NHL Stanley Cup Final - Media Day
Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy wants it all. Can he and the rest of the Lightning take this year’s Cup over the Dallas Stars?
Photo by Andy Devlin/NHLI via Getty Images

Two southern NHL clubs will play a best of seven series in Edmonton for the right to hoist Lord Stanley’s Cup. The 2020 NHL Season has been anything but normal. Will the Tampa Bay Lightning win their first cup since 2004. while the Stars would like to secure their first cup in 21 years.

Will the Lightning ride high on their high powered forwards, or will the underdog Stars surprise? Our staff weighs in:

Alex Corey Matt Preston Shona Czechboy Jeff
Tampa in 7 Tampa in 5 Tampa Tampa in 6 Tampa in 6 Dallas in 7 Dallas in 7

Some thoughts from some of our panelists:

Alex: Dallas is clicking on all the right cylinders right now, and Tampa has various injuries that will make scoring more difficult. But in the end, Stamkos returns mid-series and provides enough spark to win the series.

Shona: I think they’ve just got a deeper team. Also, I’m not sure that Dallas has been tested in quite the same way.

Czechboy: I’m picking them because we are paying Sekera 2.5 million RIGHT NOW to play for the Stars in the finals (think of how that extra 2.5 million could help in a goalie or 3C search). It’d be nice to have an Oiler Dman on the payroll win a cup. In either case, the Cup will be going to the Czech Republic (after a 14 day quarantine I assume) so all good. Go hockey!

I picked Dallas. Dallas is the heavy underdog (As of this writing, Tampa was holding at 1/2 odds). Why Dallas? Anything can happen in a series. In seven games, Dallas can win four. Steven Stamkos isn’t yet back, and the Stars could get a little lucky. All aboard Anton Khudobin.

Game 1 begins at 5:30 PM local time. Who will emerge on top?