The 2022 Stanley Cup Final is set: Colorado vs. Tampa Bay, facing off for glory.
Back-to-back defending champions, the Lightning enter the Final as underdogs despite employing one of the NHL's best players at each position in Nikita Kucherov, Victor Hedman and Andrei Vasilevskiy. Their path saw them stave off a talented Maple Leafs team in seven games, followed by a second-round sweep of the league's best regular-season team in the Panthers before knocking off the Rangers in six.
For a big chunk of those games, the Lightning were without star center Brayden Point, who suffered a lower-body injury in Game 7 of the first-round. Point might not be ready to go for Game 1, but Jon Cooper all but guaranteed he'd return during the Final.
Kucherov, clicking at a 1.35 points per game average this postseason, has more points (89) over the past three postseasons than any player not named Mario Lemieux or Wayne Gretzky recorded in a three-year span in league history.
Vasilevskiy is on a historic run of his own. In 65 starts over the past three seasons, he's rocking a .931 save percentage and has saved an absurd 41.7 goals above expected, according to Evolving Hockey.
The Lightning could become the first team to win three consecutive Stanley Cups since the New York Islanders did so in the early 1980s.
The Avalanche steamrolled their way to the Final, rocking a 12-2 record through three rounds. Though this team has been on the cusp for several seasons, this is their first postseason in which they made it beyond the second-round in the Nathan MacKinnon era.
Perhaps the only other team in the league that can match the Lightning's high-end talent, the Avalanche boast cream of the crop players at both forward and defense, but their goaltending situation is far less stable.
Darcy Kuemper figures to man the crease for the Avalanche, even though he hasn't played since Game 1 of the Conference Final when he left with a lower-body injury. To that point, he posted an average .908 save percentage and surrendered 5.8 more goals than expected of him ... it just didn't matter due to the high-flying offensive attack in front of him.
MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen and Gabriel Landeskog are elite players, but the Avalanche's X-factor will be Cale Makar, who has not only solidified himself as one of, if not the best defenseman in the league, but possibly a top-five skater in general. His offensive prowess is eye-popping (22 points in 14 games this postseason) and he displayed the ability to shut down Connor McDavid about as well as humanly possible during their most recent series.
Will Jack Johnson finally get his named etched on the Stanley Cup, or will the Lightning cement their dynasty with a feat that hasn't been accomplished in 40 years?
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Colorado Avalanche, Tampa Bay Lightning
Our hockey staff predicts the Final:
Danny Shirey: Look for the Avs to overwhelm the Lightning in Games 1 and 2. Whether or not they can solve Vasilevskiy is a different story. Their speed alone will put the Lightning -- who don't play with as much pace -- on their heels before they are able to make some adjustments. I have no doubt in my mind those adjustments will make it a competitive series, but I'm not comfortable betting against the dominating brand of hockey that MacKinnon and Makar have showcased this postseason. We might be seeing their very best hockey right now. Avalanche in six
Taylor Haase: The Lightning definitely win the goaltending battle. They win the experience battle, too. But the Avalanche are just a juggernaut. A wild card here is when Point and Nazem Kadri are able to return to their respective teams. But even if the Avalanche are without Kadri for the start of the series, I just don't see Avalanche losing this. They're also coming into this series pretty rested, playing against a Lightning team that has played an absurd amount of hockey over the last three years. I think Vasilevskiy will be a big part of keeping this series close and making it go the distance, but Colorado's stars like Makar, Rantanen, MacKinnon and Landeskog will have the Avalanche preventing Tampa's three-peat, much to the benefit of Kucherov's liver. Avalanche in seven
Dejan Kovacevic: I don't trust Kuemper any farther than I can throw Pavel Francouz. Which isn't exactly a mile high. Rewind through the history of the Final, and one won't find many goaltending matchups in which the lesser player wound up winning the Cup. To my mind, there haven't been any since Corey Crawford was pulling that off regularly in Chicago. Now, if there's any assembly of skaters capable of overcoming those odds, it's Colorado's. Even if Point's back for Tampa Bay, the scales are tipped toward the Avalanche in depth of skill and speed. But I'm buying on the Bolts. Again. They've been here, they've done it and, unlike the Penguins' back-to-back Cups in 2016 and 2017, they haven't had to drag through full 82-game regular seasons, so they'll be just fine physically as well. Oh, and they've got the very best goaltender on the planet. By a mile. Lightning in six
