The S49 regular season is now behind us and playoffs will begin shortly. After a tight race in the middle of the pack during most of the season the dust has finally settled. The top six teams have earned a bye into the second round, and the bottom four will be facing off in our first round. I'll give an outline of each of the two series and give my prediction.


The season series between these two teams went to the Raptors 3-2, with each team winning one game in the shootout. Goals scored were 9 - 8 in favour of Colorado. Overall on paper I'd say it looks very close between these two. Colorado finished with the most loser points in the league, but if they won even a couple of those could have shot up in the standings. They finished pretty much where their team stats put them. Anchorage has great shot generation but has been bad on the PK and getting scored on. This could be due to relying heavily on rookie goaltender Ian Venables. Finishing the season with the lowest SV% of each starting goalie, Venables will have to do everything in his power to prepare for this upcoming series with the Raptors. I think his play will be a key factor in this series. If he can give Anchorage a mere league average SV% they will have a shot at taking out Colorado, otherwise the Raptors should take it over a seven game series.

My predicted outcome: Colorado in 6



The season series between these two went to St.Louis 4-1 with goals scored being 20-17 for them. Three of Anaheim's four losses to St.Louis were one goal games so the season series could have gone either way. St.Louis has mostly used rookie goalie Shiqa Vitalievich which has worked  surprisingly well has they have posted a .881SV%, good for 6th among starters. This is ahead of Anaheim's starter, Patrick Niederreiter who finished the regular season with .875% which was 9th. If Vitalievich can withstand the pressure of playoffs and keep that up, his team couldn't ask for much more. I think the key to this series will be St.Louis' first group of forwards. They played league average minutes for a top line and Nikolaj Muller won the scoring title for the second time in a row. Barret Blackwood and Mika Kandinsky dropped a bit at the end of the season to 10th and 13th respectively. They're able to handle more minutes so it will be on the coach whether or not to play them more often, but will he?

My predicted outcome: St.Louis in 5 if their top line sees more ice time percentage. Anaheim in 7 if that remains the same.