And the winner is...

Before I do an long and drawn out playoff prediction piece, here's my prediction for who wins the Stanley Cup. Are you ready? Sitting down? Okay, here goes. The Stanley Cup winners will be.....................One of  Washington, San Jose, Chicago, Phoenix, New Jersey, Vancouver, Detroit, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh or Buffalo.

"Wait," you say to yourself. "All you did was name the ten best teams based on regular season record. That's no prediction. Any putz could do that. Why the hell are you wasting my time?" If you'll indulge me a few more minutes, I will explain.

The ten teams that I've listed do in fact posses the ten best records from the regular season or as I like to call them "The Top Third." The teams ranked 11-20 are therefore "The Middle Third" and the bottom ten are "The Last Third." With one exception, one of these Top Third teams have won every single Stanley Cup since the league doubled in size in 1967-68. Check hockey-reference.com if you don't believe me.

Even the supposed "upset" champions were in that top 33%. We remember Ken Dryden backstopping the '71 Habs to a shocking opening round win over a Bruins team that finished 57-14-7 (121 of a possible 156 points) and led by Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito. What gets forgotten is that Montreal finished with 94 points themselves, good for 4th in the 14 teams league. That they won the Stanley Cup shouldn't have surprised anyone.

Similarly the 1979-80 New York Islanders went into their final with the Philadelphia Flyers as the clear underdogs. The Flyers were the President's Trophy winners, finishing 25 points ahead of the Isles (116 to 91). But of course, those 91 points were good enough for 5th overall in the NHL. Yes, it was an upset in terms of the head-to-head battle but it wasn't as if the Long Island boys were crap; they were still a half-decent team.

The only time that a middle third team became King of the Mountain was in 1994-95 when New Jersey Devils swept of the Detroit Red Wings. But even if we grant that this was an upset, we must also take into account the elephant in the room: the 1994-95 season was sham of a year. The season was only 48 games, most of the players played themselves into shape and many teams month-to-month records are completely without reason. That the Devils were able to accomplish this feat in this screwy, shortened season I feel only continues to prove the point of how damn near impossible Stanley Cup upsets are.

One of the great myths that the NHL has managed to cultivate over the years is that once the playoffs start, anything can happen. It's a second season. That you can throw regular season records out and only focus on the games at hand. You've all heard the cliches. What the league has done is created a giant half-truth. It conjures up images of the great upstarts: '82 Canucks, '91 North Stars, the '96 Panthers, '03 Mighty Ducks, '04 Flames and '06 Oilers. Teams that scraped by in the regular season, barely making the playoffs. But when it mattered, these 6th, 7th and 8th placed teams went above and beyond the call of duty making all the way to the Stanley Cup Final...and then lost.

While we pat these dark horse teams on the back and admire their tenacity, we must remember that they were (at the end of the day) failures. We must not forget that in 1982, the Islanders swept the Canucks. That in '91, Pittsburgh massacred the North Stars 8-0 in game six. And that even though the Ducks, Flames and Oilers went seven games, the favourites dominated game seven every time. Honestly, I don't care that the Ducks, Flames and Oilers took the eventual champs to seven games. They all lost that critical battle. In these playoffs, there is only true victor: The Cup Winners.

The Stanley Cup playoffs is one of the most grueling events in all of sports. Four best-of-seven series played over a two month span. To win, teams need to stay completely focused for a extended period of time. With as many of as seven games against the same opponent, scouting and coaching staffs come to posses literally boxes of notes and tape by the end of a given series. They can know their opponents better than they know their own team. And of course, everything has to be clicking. Forwards, defencemen, goaltenders, special teams, coaching, scouting. All of it needs to be in place for glory at the end. I therefore submit that based on past evidence, teams that have not exhibited these features enough during the first 82 games will eventually be stopped at some point in the post-season. It doesn't matter if it's in game four of the first round or game seven of the Stanley Cup final. The end is result is still the same. There is still only one big winner at the end and won't be an underdog; if a team that I didn't mention at the top is able to make the Stanley Cup final, they will be dead on arrival.