Lord Stanley's Pool 2017 - Final Analysis

The 2017 Lord Stanley's Pool was marked with a rotating cast on the leaderboard, as fortunes changed each round when top teams went down. Chicago's shocking sweep - scoring only three goals - hampered many but they weren't the only top team to go down. Co-favourite Washington was eliminated as usual in round 2 as was third-ranked Edmonton.

In the end it was pool newcomer Matt Steeves who triumphed after Pittsburgh's Cup win, staying out of the leaderboard spotlight but within striking distance the whole way. Congratulations to Matt on a well deserved victory, as the only poolie who picked three Penguins and three Predators - and the only one who took either Pekka Rinne or Roman Josi.

Following Matt was a familiar face... who it seems is a permanent fixture on the pool podium. Against all odds Jessica Thompson has returned to the podium for the fourth straight year with two straight shutouts from Matt Murray to end the finals. Jessica was only two points behind Matt, and likely would have walked away with it had Murray not missed half of the playoffs. More on Jessica below.

Finishing third is another newcomer, Michael McShane, picking Pittsburgh as well as P.K.Subban of the Predators. Congratulations to all of the winners!

Key to the pool
The key to the pool this year was not only to pick Pittsburgh to win, but also have Nashville content to carry you. Two of the three money winners had at least one Predator on their roster. There were a few others who picked Nashville players, but none of them had the Penguins to win and only one also had a Penguins player.

And of course if you were going to pick the Penguins to win, you were obviously going to take Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby among your players.

The Wayne Gretzky of hockey pool players
After making a fuss in the opening analysis over the improbability of the same person finishing in the top three for three years in a row, I basically dismissed the possibility of Jessica Thompson doing it again this year. And when Matt Murray went down to injury - and her three Chicago picks eliminated early - things seemed to be playing out as you would expect. But here we are two months later and Jessica has done it again.

To be clear, Jessica has been in the pool four years, and has won money all four times, in a pool of 273 people (214 the first year) most of whom know a thing or two about hockey. No one else has done it even twice in a row, and only a small few have been on the podium twice - in smaller pools and with losing years in between. Jessica has done it in the four largest pools and has never finished off the podium.

Last year I calculated the odds of her three-peat at one in 2.5 million, which I low-balled. Finishing 1st, 3rd, 1st was actually one in five million, with a three-peat anywhere on the podium at 565,000. A four-peat on the podium with the number of entries each year is one in 49 million, and finishing 1st-3rd-1st-2nd one in a mind-boggling 694 million. So let's say there is a lot more skill involved than luck and we dial it down to one in 100 million, it is still far beyond odds that even make sense.

Congratulations once again to Jessica Thompson. You will retire as the greatest hockey pool champion of all-time. (But please don't retire.)

The thin edge of the wedge
Sports are games of inches, bounces, and luck and it's always easy to say "if only" a minor thing was different, the outcome would have been affected. This year perhaps more than any other, we had the thin edge of the wedge in the Conference Finals between Pittsburgh and Ottawa. Game 7 against Washington the round before was one thing, but against Ottawa, Pittsburgh was taken to double overtime of game 7, where a single shot, a single deflection, would have eliminated Pittsburgh. That would have meant no repeat Cup champions, no Crosby repeat Conn Smythe, and an entirely different result in Lord Stanley's Pool. (Not to mention a Canadian team in the finals for the first time in a while.) Clearly by overtime of game 7 any team could have won and Ottawa almost did on a number of chances. But Pittsburgh had a way of winning in every one of their do-or-die situations and that is why they're the Cup champs again.

Hindsight awards
Special mention always goes to those who had the foresight to pick top-performing players who nobody else did. These are the "hindsight" awards because they are the picks everyone else would have picked in hindsight. The biggest one this year resulted in a pool victory: Matt Steeves was the only one to pick Pekka Rinne, the top goalie with 27 points - and Matt was also the only one to take second-place defenceman Roman Josi (14 points). Both of these were instrumental in Matt's victory. Two others also impressed: rookie Jake Guentzel had 21 points for Laura Tackaberry while Bobby Ryan (15 points) was picked only by Ron Wener. Rinne and Josi are both on dream team while Guentzel had enough points to be but missed out because of the three Penguins ahead of him.

Two stories, three goaltenders
Goaltending is always the most important position in the pool and this year was no different, with the top two goalies making the difference for the top two finishers. Pekka Rinne walked away with the top goalie honours after establishing himself with two shutouts and three assists early in the playoffs. Rinne set the record for pool points in a single game, with 8 - a win, shutout, and two assists in the same contest. After a bit of searching through old game boxscores, I can confirm that Rinne is the second player to do this in NHL history, and first in the history of the pool. It was previously done by Tom Barrasso for the Penguins in 1993.

At the other end of the rink, Matt Murray finished as both the second ranked goalie and the Cup winner for the second year in a row. Despite playing less than half of the playoffs, Murray had three shutouts (two straight to end the finals) and beat his total from last year. But Marc-Andre Fleury, picked by no one, had to step in when Murray was injured, and had nine wins and a shutout himself, to rank third among goales. We've seen second goalies get the odd win on Cup-winning teams before, but never before have we seen two goalies from the same team both in the top three goalies.

Dream Team
The best picks possible under the rules of the pool, the Dream Team is the combination of players you would have picked if you came back from the future with the sports almanac. Four players return from last year's dream team: Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Phil Kessel, and Ryan Getzlaf. For Crosby, Malkin and Getzlaf it is their fifth LSP dream team appearances, setting a new record high. Crosby has six, including Shoot for Gold, leading all players. Remarkably, Getzlaf is on his fifth dream team while making it to the finals only once (2007); he is here for the third time in four years.

For the first time since 2012 (Vancouver) we have representatives from Canadian teams on the dream team - both from Ottawa and from Edmonton.

See all dream teams here.

2017 Dream Team
Forwards
Evgeni Malkin, PIT, 28 (47 picks)
Sidney Crosby, PIT, 27 (114 picks)
Phil Kessel, PIT, 23 (34 picks)
Ryan Getzlaf, ANA, 19 (65 picks)
Filip Forsberg, NAS, 16 (4 picks)
Leon Draisaitl, EDM, 16 (69 picks)
Defense
Erik Karlsson, OTT, 18 (43 picks)
Roman Josi, NAS 14 (1 pick)
Goalie
Pekka Rinne, NAS, 27 (1 pick)
Team: Pittsburgh, 10
Dream Team Score: 198 points
Winning Score: 134 points

This year's pool records
Low-scoring years seldom have many records but we did record a few on the futility side. Chicago's 1.37 points per pick was the lowest ever for teams with at least 10% of pool picks (and contrasts with Pittsburgh's 23.7, third-highest and most since 2009). On the individual side, we had a record for fewest points by one entry (18), fewest forwards points (12), fewest defenseman points (0 - a record to be tied but never beaten).