I recently realized that I never blogged about the result of the Stanley Cup final! It was just forgetfulness rather than embarrassment because I picked the right winner. I’m quite happy for the LA Kings to win it. They have had an exciting and young team for several years, and I am glad that Mike Richards and Jeff Carter teamed up to win the Cup after being shockingly traded a year ago. That pick put me over .500 with a 8/15 final record.

Here’s my prediction record over the last couple of years:

• 2012 – 0.533
• 2011 – 0.666
• 2010 – 0.666
• 2009 – n/a
• 2008 – 0.600
• 2007 – 0.800
• 2006 – 0.533

I blogged about the Stanley Cup so late, that the draft passed too! Toronto had the 5^th pick which was promising because that pick usually yielded a decent, if not amazing pick. Kessel was a #5 pick. Toronto’s last #5 pick ended up being Luke Schenn.

Toronto has been looking for a #1 center for the last few years, and picking early gave them an excellent opportunity to grab one. When it came our turn, there was still a center left (Grigorenko) and another promising forward (Forsberg). We ended up taking a defencemen (Reilly) and I was quite disappointed about that. The Leafs already have a great number of young, promising defencemen (Schenn, Gardiner, Blacker, Holzer, Gunnarssson, Franson, Percy) and a number of older defencemen signed for several more years (Liles – 4 years, Komisarek – 2 years, and we’re not trading our Captain Phaneuf). We might end up winning the Schultz sweepstakes as well. What are we going to do with a logjam on defence? I would have rather we bet our pick on a high skilled, potentially elite forward.

Then, after our controversial pick, the next 5 picks were also for defencemen! That’s 8 defencemen in the first 10 picks. I don’t think that has ever happened before. Time will tell whether that was a good idea or not; Grigorenko and/or Forsberg might be this year’s Cam Fowler and Sean Couturier.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: hockey, predictions, toronto