After a long 82-game season headlined by Team U.S.A.\u2019s Olympic gold medal win, the Stanley Cup Playoffs have finally arrived.<\/p>\n
As a New Jersey Devils fan, calling it a \u201clong\u201d season seems like an understatement. I\u2019m pretty sure I experienced every possible emotion watching a team I felt so confident in completely fall apart.<\/p>\n
And now they have a huge offseason ahead of them. They just hired a new general manager, and it will be really interesting to see what moves are made and how the team looks this fall.<\/p>\n
Anyways, with the Devils out, I have no choice but to begin my annual \u201chate-watch\u201d period earlier than expected.<\/p>\n
Since the Devils play in the Metropolitan division, there are a few teams that I simply can not root for, number one on that list is the Carolina Hurricanes.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes are essentially my number one enemy. They just have the Devils number. Every time they play, I question my sanity and why I like the sport to begin with. Just kidding, well sort of.<\/p>\n
The first round matchup of the Hurricanes and the Ottawa Senators intrigues me. I like some Senators players like Brady Tkachuk and Tim St\u00fctzle, and I hope Ottawa wins, but I am concerned about them getting through Carolina.<\/p>\n
Probably the hardest matchup for me to choose is the Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers series. Yeah, this is my nightmare, and honestly I don\u2019t have a pick. I don\u2019t like either team at all.<\/p>\n
But one series I am excited for is the Buffalo Sabres and the Boston Bruins.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I think this will be a great series and I\u2019m really looking forward to seeing how it unfolds. Buffalo had a really rough start and completely turned it around to end a 14-year playoff drought, and Boston was supposed to be in a rebuild, but had a great year. I could go either way here, but my pick is Buffalo.<\/p>\n
To round out the Eastern Conference, the Tampa Bay Lightning and Montreal Canadiens face off. I think this is another tough one, but I\u2019m taking Tampa Bay.<\/p>\n
Switching to the Western Conference, the first-round series I am most excited for is the Minnesota Wild and Dallas Stars.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m hopping on the Wild bandwagon this year. I love their group with players like Quinn Hughes, Matt Boldy, Brock Faber, and my personal favorite, Kirill Kaprisov. There\u2019s a reason they call him Kirill the Thrill, he\u2019s so entertaining to watch, and I can\u2019t wait to see what he does in the playoffs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I even got myself a Kaprisov shirt (shoutout to my sister, who kindly gifted it to me for my birthday a couple weeks ago).<\/p>\n
I\u2019m also interested in how teams like the Utah Mammoth and Anaheim Ducks will fare. Utah plays the Vegas Golden Knights in their first playoff appearance since moving from Arizona.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I think Vegas wins this series, but Utah is a wildcard for me. As for the Ducks, who have a young team, they play the experienced Edmonton Oilers, who are coming off back-to-back Cup final losses.<\/p>\n
Lastly, in the West are the Los Angeles Kings and the Presidents\u2019 Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche. Personally, I don\u2019t like the Avs, and I\u2019d like to see the Kings advance in An\u017ee Kopitar\u2019s final season, so my pick is L.A.<\/p>\n
My dream 2026 Stanley Cup Final matchup is the Minnesota Wild and the Buffalo Sabres, with the Wild winning it all.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But, I really have nothing on the line with my team already being out, so I\u2019m just enjoying the \u201cstress-free\u201d hockey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a long 82-game season headlined by Team U.S.A.\u2019s Olympic gold medal win, the Stanley Cup Playoffs have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5109],"tags":[201,5,576,151,5185,5184,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-558332","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-jersey-devils","8":"tag-devils","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-new-jersey","11":"tag-new-jersey-devils","12":"tag-newjersey","13":"tag-newjerseydevils","14":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116451201799507345","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}