Lord Stanley's Pool 2016 - Final Analysis

The 2016 Lord Stanley's Pool was a survival-of-the-fittest battle that few survived more than two rounds. With most of the favoured teams going down early (Chicago, LA, Anaheim first round, Washington, Dallas second), the survivors rose to the top in round three before a final-round photo finish where the top two matched each other point-for-point.

In the end a Joe Thornton (questionably offside) empty-net assist offset Martin Jones' win in game five to preserve a tie between pool champions Dan Salerno and Jessica Thompson. Both had six players in the finals; Dan augmented his with three Capitals while Jessica had three Stars; third place finisher Hugh MacPhie also had Capitals for his final three. Jessica's inspired pick of top goalie Martin Jones compensated for a dud in Tyler Seguin who only played one game.

In most pools you could never expect to be on the podium with a dud pick - let alone all three money-winners having picked three players eliminated in round two. But this pool was about survival and these three managed to stay alive. Congratulations on your well-deserved wins!

Key to the pool
One constant was clear in all the leading entries: Sharks. If you didn't have three top Sharks, you had no chance. To emphasize this point, Joe Pavelski - who didn't even make the Dream Team - was picked 26 times, and 23 of these entries were in the top 25 in the pool, including all of the top 18.

For those wanting to finish atop the block of Sharks pickers, you also needed three Penguins not named Marc-Andre Fleury. All three people with six players in the final round (and not Fleury) were in the top three overall.

One in 2.5 million
Against incredible odds, Jessica Thompson has managed to reach the top three in three straight Lord Stanley's Pools! Jessica won in 2014, finished third last year, and this year tied for first. These are the only three pools she has participated in, giving her a perfect record. Someone might correct my odds, but my calculation puts these odds at about 1:2,541,357 (and possibly longer than that). With the amount of luck affecting the outcome and over 250 entries per year, one can only marvel at this result.

Few others have been in the LSP money multiple times and none twice in a row. Vince Brescia won the 1999 and 2001 pools when there were significantly fewer entries. Andrew Ryan won in 2000 and returned to the podium in 2011. More recently with larger pools, Stephen Craig didn't win but was top three in both 2012 and 2014.

Including Shoot for Gold international pools, George Smith is the only other three-time money winner, winning the Olympic pool in 2002 and placing in the '04 World Cup along with the '06 playoff pool. Vince Galante (both in same year, 2002) and Richard Gretzinger ('05 and '06) placed once each in Shoot for Gold and Lord Stanley's Pool.

Record-setting start
With the late-playoff drama and the collapse of the good teams, it would be easy to overlook some remarkable results early in the pool. Connor Brewster stormed off to an amazing start by destroying the record for most points in one night, on the first night of the pool. Connor's 21-point night on April 15 smashed the previous record of 18 set in 2008; then for good measure, Connor matched that old record of 18 on the last night of the round, April 27. It carried him in the pool lead until late in round 2.

Defensive prowess
A year after marveling about Duncan Keith's 21-point playoff - tying the highest point total for a defenseman since the pool began in 1998 - we had an even more impressive performance this year. San Jose's Brent Burns dominated the position with 24 points, the sixth best total of all-time (tied with Mr. Orr behind five other hall-of-famers - Coffey, Leetch, MacInnis, Potvin, Bourque). Burns' 24 along with Kris Letang's 15 points contributed to a new pool record for most points by defensemen (39), set by eight poolies.

Dream Team
The best picks possible under the rules of the pool, the Dream Team is the combination of players you were going to pick all along (before you changed your mind, of course). This year the top goalie, defenseman, and forward were absolute shoo-ins, and all came from the Sharks. Logan Couture, Brent Burns and Martin Jones dominated the pool and are on the dream team for their first times each. Couture was picked only once and Jones just three times.

Two players return from last year's team, both from Tampa Bay: forwards Nikita Kucherov and Tyler Johnson were counted out at the start, with far fewer picks this year but were top performers nonetheless. Victor Hedman's here for the first time; his great playoff last year didn't qualify. As for the Penguins, it is Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin's fourth times each, Phil Kessel's second (other was '14 Olympics) . Nick Bonino's here for the first time.

See all dream teams here.

2015 Dream Team
Forwards
Logan Couture, SAN, 30 (1 pick)
Phil Kessel, PIT, 22 (33 picks)
Nikita Kucherov, TAM, 19 (7 picks)
Sidney Crosby, PIT, 19 (97 picks)
Nick Bonino (1 pick) OR Evgeni Malkin (12 picks), PIT, 18
Tyler Johnson, TAM, 17 (4 picks)
Defense
Brent Burns, SAN, 24 (36 picks)
Victor Hedman, TAM 14 (9 picks)
Goalie
Martin Jones, SAN, 29 (3 picks)
Team: Pittsburgh, 10
Dream Team Score: 202 points
Winning Score: 160 points

This year's pool records
This year we made up for having set no records last year, by setting plenty. Some are listed on the pool records page while others are more obscure, such as most points in a day in round 3, most shutout-and-assist nights in one year (and by the same goalie), and others I wrote about in the blog but forgot already. Hey, this is serious stuff but I was probably sleep deprived and discovered some obscure stat never to be repeated.

Coming soon: Shoot for Gold: World Cup Challenge 2016
Great news! No need to wait another year for the next pool. Coming in September is the return of World Cup Challenge! Since I named it that in the last World Cup in 2004, I needed to keep the name consistent but in reality it is the same as all the Shoot for Gold pools so for clarity sake I named it both. If you were concerned about this please email me with the subject line "Go to bed already Mitch it's 3AM". Seriously, I really did spend a minute or two thinking about this.