Monday night marks the beginning of the final series for the National Hockey League season. The Stanley Cup Final opens with Game 1 between the San Jose Sharks and the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Before we go into the factors of this series, here's how both teams made it to the final.
For the Sharks, the third-place team in a fairly weak Pacific Division, there wasn't much expectation from the hockey world, especially opening against the Los Angeles Kings. But the Sharks made that series look easy with a 4-1 series win.
It was the next series that would challenge the Sharks. Oddly enough, another team not given much of a chance took San Jose to the brink. The Nashville Predators stunned the Anaheim Ducks with wins in Game 6 and 7 to advance to the second round and faced the same deficit heading into Game 6. They won that night as well to force a Game 7. The Sharks proved to be too much, as they took a convincing 5-0 win in the deciding Game 7.
Finally, there was the Conference Finals, where the Sharks and Blues went back and forth in the first four games before the Sharks grabbed decisive victories in Games 5 and 6 to advance to the Stanley Cup Final.
The Penguins did not face as much adversity in the early going. They were easily hockey's hottest team as the regular season ended and showed it with a series win in five games over the New York Rangers.
Pittsburgh's next challenge was the President's Trophy winners, the Washington Capitals. Again, the Penguins made this look easy, going up 3-1 in the series after a 3-2 overtime win in Game 4 before taking the series with another overtime win in Game 6.
Adversity hit in the Conference Finals. Pittsburgh watched a 2-1 series lead go to a 3-2 deficit after two crucial wins for the Tampa Bay Lightning in Games 4 and 5. The Penguins responded with a resounding 5-2 win in Game 6 to force Game 7 on home ice, where they managed to hold on for a 2-1 win and claim the series.
As the two meet, there are many key factors to watch. Goaltending is the most obvious.
As we discussed on Friday, once the two teams had claimed their spots in the Final, the performances of two upstart goalies emerging into household names helped carry both teams. Matt Murray, the rookie sensation for the Penguins, has looked like a veteran in between the pipes, while Martin Jones, in his first season as a starter, has continued to show the poise and talent that started to gain attention when he was serving as backup to Jonathan Quick with the Kings.
But these two teams are about so much more than goaltending. The goaltenders are only as good as the scoring talent and defensive ability in front of them. Both teams come complete with both.
The Penguins haven't been forced to lean on the likes of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin or Phil Kessel. Those three star players are the leaders for the Penguins in points this playoff season, but there's no shortage for production on the rest of the team.
Nick Bonino is tied with Crosby and Malkin with 15 points. Carl Hagelin has 12 points, Patric Hornqvist has 11 points and Chris Kunitz and Kris Letang have 10 points.
Even beyond that, there are some timely goals away from the Top 6. Bryan Rust scored both goals in Game 7 against the Lightning and has five in the playoffs. Veteran forward Matt Cullen has four goals in the playoffs as well.
Letang is the anchor defensively as well, but among those who have stepped up, Brian Dumoulin, Ben Lovejoy and Olli Maatta have stabilized the Penguins blue line well.
On the Sharks side, here's all you need to know about their offense. The Penguins leading scorer in the playoffs is Kessel with a total of 18 points. Four Sharks have 18 or more points in the playoffs.
Leading the way is Logan Couture, who has eight goals and 16 assists for 24 points. Joe Pavelski sits at 22 points and a team-leading 13 goals. Brent Burns has also been everywhere in the playoffs, serving as a strong defensive piece while picking up 20 points, including six goals. Finally, Joe Thornton has 18 points, including 15 assists.
And like the Penguins, the production doesn't stop there. Patrick Marleau has 12 points. Joel Ward has 11 points, including six goals. Marc-Edouard Vlasic has 11 points as well. Tomas Hertl has 10 points. Also like the Penguins, scoring has sometimes gone beyond the Top 6. Joonas Donskoi and Chris Tierney each have five goals.
Defensively, while Burns gets a lot of attention as a big point production player, the real stars have been Vlasic, Paul Martin and Justin Braun. These two pairings see the ice the most of anyone on the Sharks — Burns leads the way with an average of 25:05 of ice time while Braun comes up fourth in the group at 21:23 of average ice time — and the workload has not slowed them down or made them lose effectiveness over the course of the playoffs.
It makes complete sense then that the top two teams in scoring per game in the playoffs have made it this far. Defensively, the Sharks ranked second in goals allowed per game, behind the Capitals, while the Penguins ranked sixth — but that is also behind two teams that failed to make it out of the first round.
So who gets to raise the Stanley Cup when it's all over? This is a very tough call regardless. The Sharks come from a more dominant conference, despite playing in that conference's weaker division, but the Penguins didn't let a little hiccup in the Conference Final keep them from reaching the Stanley Cup Final when that's where they seemed destined to be since the middle of February.
It all starts on Monday night at 8 p.m. with Game 1 from Pittsburgh.
Kevin Durso is managing editor for Flyerdelphia. Follow him on Twitter @Kevin_Durso.
