It’s time for a Stanley Cup contenders update.
On Tuesday’s edition of The Daily Faceoff Show, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk listed their five teams they believe are the strongest contenders to win the 2022 Stanley Cup.
Seravalli: For me, watching the Tampa Bay Lightning and the way they’ve played over the last month, I think everyone was kind of curious how this team would look this season without Yanni Gourde, without Barclay Goodrow, without Blake Coleman, without Tyler Johnson and the answer is that they haven’t missed a beat.
That team is seemingly fazed by nothing. They’ve added Corey Perry, who’s soon to pass the last four seasons that he’s had in terms of productivity. They’re every bit as tough and difficult to play against, their goaltender is just as good, they’ve still got Victor Hedman. I’m not willing to pass up on the Tampa Bay Lightning and the chance of them three-peating.
I don’t know if people are looking at the Colorado Avalanche necessarily, but they’ve actually been quite good. They’re further down in the standings because people aren’t sorting by points percentage. They’ve played five or six fewer games than just about everyone and they just need to get healthy.
All of their injuries have happened in bunches, where a lot of their players are out at the same time. So it’s been sort of hard to evaluate Colorado, but I think they’re right there.
The St. Louis Blues have taken some big steps, the Vegas Golden Knights are just going to get better with Jack Eichel and the Florida Panthers are just a difficult team to play against.
Who do you have?
Yaremchuk: I went with the Vegas Golden Knights at No. 1 for a few reasons. Vegas is only getting better with Eichel and the one caveat here is I hope they can get to the playoffs without having to offload so much to remain salary cap compliant.
But if they can, that center depth where you’re going Eichel, William Karlsson, Chandler Stephenson and then Nic Roy — that’s four good centermen. Their wing depth is good, the blue line has three solid defenders and they have a No. 1 goalie in Robin Lehner. I look at that and think what more could you want from a team?
If they can get to the playoffs with this group and everyone healthy, I look at the Western Conference and think, who’s going to take down this group?”
You can watch the full episode here…
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