I don't think you'd find one. Each series is so incredibly different. You have series like last year, where you severely outplayed the Pens (and this is coming from a Pens fan) but were stonewalled by Fleury. You have series like 2015-2016 where the play was even but a few key blunders cost the Caps. Some of it could come up to bad luck, some of it to pure coaching, maybe the blame lies with the captain for not being a motivating presence. No one stat is going to tell the story of 19 years of playoff struggles.

Tampa and Pittsburgh to me have a wide edge in the East. It would take upsets and luck by any team to displace these two. The West in more wide open. Edmonton, Anaheim are my top two.

I was being sarcastic...kind of taunting phillyjabroni

However, that wide edge disappears if we play Dan the useless Girardi

So the wide edge is irrelevant since Dan Giradri (who cannot suppress a shot if his hockey career depended on it) will most lie fly get top 6 minutes.

**** me. He's probably getting top pairing minutes over Dotchin, Koekkoek, Stralman and Sergachev just because Hedman drags his ass around to make him look half decent

At least you don't have provorov bailing MacDonald out every time they have a shift together.

Same thing more or less

expect you don't have him on the books for 3 years longer and at 5M

We have Ryan Callahan at almost 6 million for 3 more years

yeah, and they were still the 2nd best team this playoff, they just went up against the best in the 2nd round.

Wow, are you saying playing Girardi will stop the Lightning from being a cup contender? I'm really not trying to be mean here but is this a joke?

Scenario: "game 7 of the first round, Tampa vs (insert Team X). Tie game with 1 minute left in the 3rd period. Girardi is stuck on the ice because he can't stop icing the puck, (Team X) wins the faceoff in the offensive zone, Girardi loses coverage of his man becasue he just realized he forgot to lace up his skates, which is why he can't stop falling down, (Team X) scores!!!!! ............ Tampa loses... Tampa is eliminated..." end scenario

My list is Pittsburgh Washington Tampa in the east with Toronto looking from the outside

Anaheim, Nashville, Chicago in the west, with Edmonton looking from the outside.

That is if we're basing it on pure favouritism of winning a cup, there's probably a couple other teams that could win the cup if bounces go their way

So you know for a fact that Washington would have beat Ottawa? Nashville?

You aren't the second best team if you don't make it past the 2nd round. Washington had the talent on paper, but for as much as you harp on teams for "not working together", how did they manage to fail... again?