Ryan O'Reilly had a huge final round to lead the league in scoring and take home the Conn Smythe.

Final Pool Analysis
The 2019 Lord Stanley's Pool will be remembered for its disasters - both hockey and technical. The unprecedented defeat of all four division winners in round one (including the Tampa Bay Lightning, the heaviest favourite in pool history, going out in four straight), the elimination of a record-shattering 81% of picks, and 40% of pool entries completely wiped out left a massive hole in the standings just two weeks into the playoffs.

Of course no sooner than the damage was incurred our server went down and the data with it. I suppose it was fitting that it happened this year of all years. We did manage to get the data back (17 days later) and restored everything completely so we didn't lose any picks. Thank you for your patience over that time while things were being rebuilt and to all who assisted in reconstructing the picks, tiding us over until we managed to rescue the originals.

The road to victory
Quickly emerging from the round one wreckage, Myeongja Kim climbed into the top five on April 17 on the strength of her Boston picks and Vegas' early high scoring, while Della Santin (who also picked Boston) joined her on the 23rd as San Jose's production caught up to Vegas. Both remained on the leaderboard for the duration. Myeongja ended the first round with the pool lead, surpassed soon after by Paul Groba for a week with Columbus still looking good. (Unfortunately Paul did not get credit for his week in first as the site was down at that time.) Della then took control and built an intimidating lead that held until the penultimate day. David Schamma held second, 12 points back of Della, but locked with the same remaining six players. Della's lead over Myeongja in third place was as much as 23 points with two games remaining in round three.

As St. Louis took control against San Jose and emerged as the conference champion, Myeongja began what was ultimately the greatest round 4 comeback in Lord Stanley's Pool's history. After closing the 23-point gap to 16 in the final two games of round three, Myeongja's Blues and Bruins overpowered Della's Bruins in the final round, erasing the last 16 points of the deficit and taking the lead after game 6, and winning by seven points after game 7.

Matt Steeves in 2017 was behind by 28 points late in round 2 and came back to win, the only larger deficit overcome for the pool victory, though he had 2+ rounds to do it. Myeongja's 23 points is the largest late-pool comeback and 16 points the largest round 4 comeback ever.

Congratulations to Myeongja on the win, Della for the strong second place, David and Jay Dart who finished tied for third. Jay, who climbed from 148th after round 1 to ninth after round 3, also mounted a late-pool comeback as the only poolie other than Myeongja with six players in the final round.

The St. Louis Six
While Myeongja and Jay owe their podium finishes to their St. Louis picks, they didn't pick the Blues to win. Six poolies deserve credit for correctly calling the Blues Cup win: Geraldine Comeau, who lurked just below the leaderboard for most of the way and finished in fifth, just two points back of third; Amy van Steendelaar, who led in the initial days and finished 9th; Norrin Ripsman in 17th; prodigal son Sam Wexler in 18th; Joel Greenstein in 22nd and Ella McAdam-Beder in 28th. Unfortunately out of these six poolies there was only a single Bruins pick (helping Geraldine to fifth), otherwise any of these six could have won the pool. They still finished near the top despite many of them losing their remaining players in the first round.

Key to the pool
As always, you have to pick players from winning teams if you want to win. However you didn't necessarily need any of the Cup-champion Blues to get to the podium this year. The key to the pool (for a podium finish) was to have three Bruins and three of either the Blues or the Sharks - and all four entries fitting this criteria were in the money. To win it all, though, you definitely needed Bruins and Blues - in Myeongja's case, complementing them with some high-scoring Golden Knights.

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. No players return from last year, but there are a few from previous seasons. Erik Karlsson is the most recent, previously two years ago with the Senators - and both then and now despite not making it to the finals. Karlsson also made it on the 2014 Shoot for Gold team making this his third time in total. Logan Couture and Brent Burns return from their 2016 finals appearance as did Tuukka Rask from his in 2013 while Brad Marchand was on the 2014 Shoot for Gold team. The remaining players are all recognized for the first time, including all three Blues.

See all dream teams here.

2017 Dream Team
Forwards
Ryan O'Reilly, STL, 23 (36 picks)
Brad Marchand, BOS, 23 (69 picks)
Jaden Schwartz, STL, 20 (0 picks)
Logan Couture, SAN 20 (25 picks)
David Pastrnak, BOS, 19 (36 picks)
Tino Meier (0 picks) OR Tomas Hertl (16 picks), SAN, 25
Defense
Alex Pietrangelo, STL, 19 (25 picks)
Erik Karlsson (19 picks) OR Brent Burns (68 picks), SAN, 16
Goalie
Tuukka Rask, BOS, 25 (12 picks)
Team
St. Louis, 10
TOTAL: 190
Winning Score: 140

Second-longest Cup drought ends
The St. Louis Blues were the last of the original expansion teams (1967-68) to win a Stanley Cup, ending the league's second-longest active Cup drought at 50 seasons and finals drought at 47 seasons (sorry, Leafs, on both). It was fitting that they won a year after passing a torch to the Vegas Golden Knights who like the Blues reached the finals in their first season. Those 1968 finals were against the Bruins and known for the iconic Bobby Orr photograph but Bruins fans might remember this one more for Zdeno Chara's broken jaw. The Blues complete an amazing turnaround from last place in the NHL at the beginning of January into the playoffs and to the Cup championship.

Memorable result for the Korea crew
Kudos to the Korea division on an impressive overall performance in a playoff year when clearly anything could happen. Stephen Craig's group of 12 from Korea (as seen in the standings division of that name) placed two on the podium (winner Myeongja Kim and third-place David Schamma) and two more in the top 15 (tenth-place Mike Siegler and 15th Paul Groba - who spent a week at #1). They all had different strategies and yet all finished near the top. Well done.

This year's pool records
This was a futility year so the slew of records set went along with that theme. Costa Michaelides set the new pool low (9) and first-round low (7) though he did manage to have a player in the final, more than can be said for most of the people above him who were out of players before the end of April. Myeongja Kim had the largest-ever round 4 comeback to win the pool. As a whole the pool had the greatest number of players and Cup picks eliminated in round 1, and most entries entirely wiped out both after rounds 1 and 2. Tampa Bay set multiple records for the biggest first-round upset, and also lowered the bar for fewest points per pick. Check out all of the pool records.

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. Norrin Ripsman picks up the award this year for being the only one to choose Blues forward David Perron (16 points). An even better pick would have been Jaden Schwartz (20 points), the top player that nobody took and now a member of the 2019 pool Dream Team.

Who was hot and not in the final round:

Hot	Pos. Gain (R3,R4 - not including Bonus)		Hot	Rd4 Pts.
Tim Smith	65 (283,218)		Myeongja Kim	35
Samara McAdam	61 (146,85)		Jay Dart	31
Martin Lefebvre	60 (143,83)		Gareth Neilson	23
Patrick Gill	57 (137,80)		Geraldine Comeau	22
Ethan Craig	53 (118,65)		Ethan Craig	20
Not	Pos. Loss (R3,R4 - not including Bonus))		Not	Rd4 Pts.
Andrew Ryan	37 (43,80)		206 tied with	0
Shannon Lindensmith	36 (49,85)
Stan Misthios	35 (40,75)
Dan Salerno	35 (67,102)
Grant Gillan	35 (53,88)

Team and Player Stats:

Top Players
Forwards Team Pts Picks Ryan O'Reilly STL 23 36 Brad Marchand BOS 23 69 Jaden Schwartz STL 20 0 Logan Couture SAN 20 25 David Pastrnak BOS 19 36 Patrice Bergeron BOS 17 35 Vladimir Tarasenko STL 17 44 Charlie Coyle BOS 16 0 David Perron STL 16 1 David Krejci BOS 16 2	Defense Team Pts Picks Alex Pietrangelo STL 19 25 Torey Krug BOS 18 19 Erik Karlsson SAN 16 19 Brent Burns SAN 16 68 Colton Parayko STL 12 0 Jaccob Slavin CAR 11 0 Goalies Team Pts Picks Tuukka Rask BOS 25 12 Jordan Binnington STL 22 18 Petr Mrazek CAR 15 0 Philipp Grubauer COL 13 1

Next year: Lord Stanley's Pool 2020
Thanks to everyone for playing the pool this year, I hope you enjoyed it. Please give me feedback so I can improve the pool - and be sure to return next year!