Let me ask you a question: if you’re reading this, and you’ve filled out a playoff bracket for your favorite sport before, how do you go about it? Do you pick all of the higher-seeded teams to advance just because they’re higher seeds? Do you make your picks based on gut feelings or vibes? Or do you scour the internet for various analytics that you can use to say why one team *should* win and the other team *should* lose? All of these are acceptable ways of doing it, but I find that #3 works the best, especially in hockey.

Hockey is inherently a very random sport, as we often see teams that should win games with ease on paper get completely embarrassed for little to no reason other than strange bounces of the puck or the other team catching them (and by association everyone watching) by surprise. However, despite this randomness, there are patterns which exist that tend to tell us how certain games or playoff series might go. Sometimes it’s underlying analytics like how well a team plays with or without the puck, or how sustainable their scoring is. Other times it’s up to team construction and the deployment of players by the coaches. Then, there’s my favorite of them all: recent history. I call that my favorite because it tends to be the most reliable out of all the methods you can use, from my experience at least.

That brings me to this year. The playoffs start today in a few hours, and after watching the entire season and seeing every team play through their respective seasons, I am now convinced more than ever that the Florida Panthers will be the ones to win the Stanley Cup in 2024. While many in the hockey world are picking the Rangers, Hurricanes and Stars, I’m sticking to what I’ve been thinking since January. The Panthers are not only the best team in their division, but I also think they are arguably better than the aforementioned Rangers and Hurricanes, who finished #1 and #2 in both their division and the eastern conference as a whole.

Now, why do I think so highly of this team? There are a few reasons why. For starters, the Panthers shocked the world last year by appearing in the Finals despite being the lowest-ranked team to make the playoffs. While they ultimately lost in 5 to Vegas, it wasn’t all that surprising they made it that far when you looked at the team as a whole. In the season before last year, they had gone into the playoffs with the best record in the entire league, and statistics have shown that several teams who have clinched the best record in the league over the last several years have typically won the Stanley Cup either the year they achieve said record or within the next couple years afterwards. That window is still open for the Panthers, and judging by their play this year, they are very eager to make it back to the Finals and to have the result go their way this time around.

Secondly, Florida plays a style of hockey that has been proven time and time again to be very effective in the playoffs. They are a rowdy, physical bunch who punish their opponents with big hits, suffocating defense, and lethal counter-attacks. They’ve adopted a bully mentality, which is absolutely vital. It’s very uncommon to see a team that is all skill and no grit go on to win the Stanley Cup, as hockey is inherently a very physical sport and is also quite demanding mentally. You need to have balls of steel to get the job done, and I feel that Florida has those in spades. It will be a nightmare for whoever plays them in the playoffs, and given that their first matchup is against their big brother in Tampa Bay, I’m sure that the Lightning will get a first-hand look at just how determined these guys are.

Thirdly and finally, the reason I have the Panthers winning over some of the teams I mentioned before is that I feel that while the Rangers, Stars and Hurricanes might be better on paper, they all have aspects to their game that I think the Panthers are just better at. It also helps that the eastern conference is quite weak this year and that I think the Hurricanes are really their only serious threat to getting back to the Finals. And even then, Florida proved that they could beat the Hurricanes last year by sweeping them. It was admittedly an extremely close series, but the Panthers got the clutch goals that the Hurricanes didn’t. That has been a problem for Carolina for quite a while now, and despite their great additions at the trade deadline, I expect that to continue this year. As for the Stars, I have them losing to Florida in the Finals in 6 games. The Stars are my second favorite team and I’d love to see them win it, but I’m just not feeling it this year. Florida will probably punch and suffocate their way to victory in that series, and I’ll have to respect it if it happens.

I’ve neglected to mention the elephant in the room for a bit now, so I’ll do it to wrap up. The thing with hockey is that while I think everything I’ve just said is a valid argument for why the Panthers could win the Stanley Cup, the truth is that hockey is super random and there’s truly no real way to know exactly how the playoffs are gonna go. Nobody picked the Panthers to beat the Bruins and go to the Finals last year, yet they did. Nobody thought the Lightning would get swept by the Blue Jackets in 2019, yet that happened as well. We just don’t know. Heck, the Panthers could get swept by the Lightning in the coming week despite everyone thinking the Lightning will lose. It’d kill my bracket, but it could happen. Stranger things have happened.

If everything I said in this post ends up being seriously wrong down the line, I’ll make a follow-up post in around a month or so. I’ll probably have to do one for Auston Matthews as well because he made me look like a fool this year by scoring 69 goals, which is simply silly. I still don’t think he’s a top 3 player in the league, but he deserves a lot of respect.

At any rate, long live playoff hockey, and I’ll see you later. God bless.