1. Verification word: Stick

2. c. 1 TPE New England really showed up in conference finals. Playing a 2 seed good Philly team, they seemed to score at will and rode the score up all series. Winnipeg did win one game quicker, but mainly through tough defense and scraping out those one goal victories against a 7 seed on a hot streak. 54 words

2 d. 1 TPE I have a pretty foolproof way of deciding finals winner, the eeny meeny miny moe strategy, and it picked Winnipeg to be the winner. I also asked my two year old, and he liked the green one better. So now the house is divided, great. I guess we will see which of us has the better way to pick winners. 60 words

3. 3 TPEMy guess is both these teams sandbagged a bit during the regular season in order to save some energy for the playoffs. It is tough to learn from that as most teams are still clawing their way into the playoffs and need the experience, so there is no regular season slacking off for them. They may have finished 8th and 10th, but realistically they were only about 3 games back from 3rd and 4th. There is a pretty big log jam of teams in that 3-12 area that it really comes down to experience for those teams, which New England and Winnipeg have in spades. These teams both built these dynasties through the draft. Having a few strong drafts in a row really improves your chances of contending for years instead of a cinderella run. After you find your core, you are able to trade early round picks for tanking teams top players to give you a real boost for a great. I would never count out Winnipeg to make it back again, they refuse to give up. 178 words

5. 3 TPE The biggest and most surprising upset has to be San Francisco eliminating Edmonton. I mean any time a top seed is taken out before the conference finals, I would call that a pretty big upset. But having it done by a 7 seed, when Edmonton had only lost 14 games all season, then go on to lose 4 in 6 to . With SF being a barely .500 team, taking out the president trophy winner who had 11 wins over the next in conference is massive. What makes it more impressive to me is winning two games in overtime. This showed us how serious that SF team was to take it to the defending champs in sudden death. But the best part to me is that Edmonton beat them 7 times in the regular season. Imagine not losing to a team all year, then getting beat 4/6 to get eliminated. Brutal. Also even though they lost against Winnipeg, all those games were very close. Was kind of sad to see their run end. 173 words

8 TPE Total