I’ll go Dallas in 7, so then Vaseilesky sets the NHL record for wins in a playoff (17) but also doesn’t win the cup.

Screw tampa bay, lets go dallas.

Why you mad tho?

honestly i wanted vegas because neither of these teams deserves it in my eyes idc about the covid playoffs and whos the best after a 5 month layoff. i dont really like dallas either but picking lesser of 2 evils. Dallas has most former bruins on the roster.

And Vegas does? Vegas got handed a playoff team by the NHL.

yeah, based on regular season and how it was shaping up... vegas 100% deserves to be there over dallas right now.

But the regular season never means jack come playoffs. Otherwise we'd just hand the Stanley cup to the presidents trophy winner every year.

sure it does. especially when you change the seeding from what should have been to what it ended up being. tampa shoulda drawn toronto or florida first round. they could easily have rolled back the standings to game 68 or whatever and used those and done the normal 16 team format. still a 5 month layoff between final regular season game and game 1 of the playoffs and still thinking it matters just as much as a playoff bout happening april-june is it. Celtics are a few games away from being in the nba finals. thats an asterisk playoff too. They (nhl and NBA) took a product that home ice matters, fans, crowd energy, traveling etc. and made it a neutral zone exhibition. tell me home ice for a team that went 22-4-9 during the regular season on their ice vs 22-10-3 is a minimal impact. tell me a team that went 18-9-7 vs 18-16-2 on their home ice is a minimal impact (ironic they actually played on their home ice just without the fans...) or 25-6-4 vs 16-15-3, 23-8-4 vs 17-15-2... tampas a good team, dallas is a good team but they would have both been on the road in both situations if boston or aves/blues win their series. the way dallas was playing they were only 4 points up from nashville of being a wildcard team. You will never convince me that this path to the cup was even close to as meaningful as any other stanley cup in history.

NBA is the exact same way. philly would have rolled boston in philly. toronto would have rolled boston in toronto. These are neutral site exhibition tournaments. I would be saying the exact same thing if boston was there in place of Tampa. I would still want them to win, but the significance of this cup vs others is a disgrace to their respective sports in my eyes.