Kucherov and Point were only the second skater tandem in over 20 years with 30-plus points.

Final Pool Analysis
Despite a global pandemic, no fans and hockey in the dog days of summer, the Stanley Cup playoffs proceeded without any hitches and with exciting hockey, while Lord Stanley's Pool was competitive and interesting from start to finish. A far cry different from 2019 when disaster truck twice (over 80% of picks were wiped out in round one, followed by a server crash and data recovery effort after most entries were out of players). Though we had a dip in entries this year from 350 to 199, the pool had far more life than in recent seasons, right up to a dramatic last-game finish.

The road to victory
Day one of the pool turned out to be prescient, as among the eight people tied with 6 points were all of the top five finalists. They would all drop out of the top 20 by the end of round one, and needed to fight their way back over the ensuing rounds. Day One leaders normally get a bit of temporary glory but bow out soon after; this time they all managed to climb back up. While Josh Martin led for most of roune one, and Lucas Chua was the leader at the end of the round, it was Richard Gretzinger who emerged in round 2 as the mainstay leader and led for nearly three weeks until late in round three.

The turning point came at the end of round 2 when Colorado and Philadelphia (as well as Vancouver) were eliminated in game sevens on consecutive days. This hobbled Richard's team and assured his eventual drop to 8th while Mark Norman, consistently second until then, could have won easily with the opposite result in those three game sevens. The two top-five teams falling out had the most decisive impact on the outcome of the pool.

Hanna-Marea Kennedy, who was lurking on the leaderboard, took over late in round three and locked in her small lead ahead of Frank Pileggi, Adam Marrus and nearly everyone else except that Frank would pass on Tampa's victory, and except for S Ripsman and Hugh MacPhie who were among the few with Dallas players. Ripsman and MacPhie spent the Finals cheering every Dallas goal that narrowed their gap until S managed to pass Frank for the pool championship, with Frank in second, and Hugh managing to tie Hanna-Marea for third.

Key to the pool
The common Tampa Bay top line of Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point and Andrei Vasilevskiy (or Victor Hedman) were prerequisites to the leaderboard, with top scorer Kucherov on all of the top 30 entries and runner-up Point on all of the top 10. Completing the entry with six from Colorado, Dallas, Vegas or Boston would put you in the running. Winner S Ripsman got there with Dallas and Boston - top defenseman Miro Heiskanen and Alexander Radulov, the only one to take the Dallas forward. Runner-up Frank Pileggi got his secondary production from Colorado and Vegas - including Nathan MacKinnon, the #1 pick who is on the dream team despite his second round exit.

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. Nikita Kucherov is on his third dream team after making it in 2015 and 2016. Victor Hedman is on his second, while Alexander Radulov was on the Shoot for Gold team in 2014. The remaining players are all recognized for the first time. Two Colorado forwards are on the list despite being knocked out in round 2.

See all dream teams here.

2020 Dream Team
Forwards
Nikita Kucherov, TAM, 32 (64 picks)
Brayden Point, TAM, 30 (28 picks)
Nathan MacKinnon, COL, 22 (133 picks)
Jamie Benn, DAL, 19 (3 picks)
Alexander Radulov, DAL, 18 (1 pick)
Mikko Rantanen, COL, 17 (69 picks)
Defense
Miro Heiskanen, DAL, 22 (4 picks)
Victor Hedman, TAM, 21 (26 picks)
Goalie
Robin Lehner, VGK, 27 (4 picks)
Team
Tampa Bay, 10
TOTAL: 218
Winning Score: 183

Tampa Bay offence nothing to sneeze at
The year after Tampa Bay's epic 2019 first-round collapse - they were the most heavily-picked team in the pool's 20+ year history, and had the worst-ever performance - the Lightning stars came to play and won the Cup by posting some of the biggest numbers since the early '90s. Nikita Kucherov's 32 points (excluding qualifier games) were (with Kuznetsov '17) second only to Malkin '09's 36. Brayden Point's 30 gave them two players at 30+ points, matched by '09 Penguins Malkin and Crosby. We go back to Rangers '94 (3 @ 30+) since that production was beat. And Victor Hedman's 21 points made him one of three defensemen this year with 20+ points, when only four others have done so (highest being Burns '16 with 24) since the pool began in 1998.

Tampa's 180 total picks averaged 24.42 points per pick, fourth highest of any team (PIT '09, 176 picks, 29.04; NJD '03, 34, 25.02; WAS '18, 164, 24.96). Compare to Tampa 2019... 819 picks, 1.26 pts/pick.

Naturally then, LSP 2020 had generally high scores. Pool leaders were generally in the top five overall high scores per round, the winner joins a small club with 180+ points and the Dream Team's 218 was the second-highest possible total.

Unusual goalie battles
The goalie pick as a general rule is your most important - and pools have been won and lost on many a goalie selection. Often the top point-getter in the pool, especially when they have two or more shutouts on the way to the Cup, the goalie can make or break your fortunes. But not this year! In an upside down year in general, top goalie Robin Lehner wasn't even in the finals, was picked only four times and had to supplant the expected #1, Marc-Andre Fleury. With 27 points from only seven wins (Fleury took two for himself) and four shutouts, Lehner's truncated dominance made him the first goalie to top his position after being eliminated before the Final. Andrei Vasilevskiy was second at 22 only because of his first shutout in the final game, and otherwise would have been fourth, while Anton Khudobin was next at 19 but wasn't picked by anyone. Kudos to the four who picked Lehner: Todd Foster, Grant Gillan, Zackary Winkler, and Stanley Tepner.

Hindsight awards
Special mention always goes to those who had the foresight to pick top-performing players who nobody else did. In addition to Vegas goalie Lehner's four picks noted above, three notables from Dallas made the dream team including defenseman Miro Heiskanen (4 picks, 22 pts) and forward Jamie Benn (3, 19 pts). The best hindsight pick of all was Alexander Radulov (18 pts), picked only by pool winner S Ripsman.

This year's pool records
After a slew of futility records set in 2019, we had a lively high scoring pool, consistently among the top five but setting few outright records. The one exception: defensemen. S Ripsman and Judah Gould have set the record for most points by their defensemen with 42, beating the previous high by three, by picking Dallas reargards Miro Heiskanen and John Klingberg. S Ripsman had the second-highest Round 4 point total (38, record 40). Check out all of the pool records.

Kronis' Corner - notes from the pool's stats co-pilot Joel Kronis
Your Stanley Cup Champions are the Tampa Bay Lightning in 6, just as I predicted at the end of round 3. It was a great series and Dallas put up a good fight but lost in the end. Conn Smythe went to Victor Hedman and S Rispman won the pool, it has been a great pool and I look forward to next year.

Mitch's predictions
With the wrong call for the Cup final I'm left with a 7-8 record for the year. Not great. But life goes on... no consequences for getting picks wrong after all! Joel schooled me on the final round pick, and we'll see what happens next year but expect him to beat me on series picks in general in the years ahead.

Who was hot and not in the final round:

Hot	Pos. Gain (R3,R4 - not including Bonus)		Hot	Rd4 Pts.
Harper Christie-Allard	52 (146,94)		S Ripsman	38
Samara McAdam	51 (120,69)		Hugh MacPhie	29
Donna Thompson	49 (126,77)		10 tied with	25
Joy Smith	44 (149,105)		9 tied with	24
Colin Kennedy	44 (155,111)
Not	Pos. Loss (R3,R4 - not including Bonus))		Not	Rd4 Pts.
Emiliano Santiago	26 (12,38)		113 tied with	0
Mark Norman	23 (21,44)
Azra Champsi	20 (79,99)
Laura Speciale	20 (79,99)
Mike Sennema	20 (77,97)

Team and Player Stats:

Top Players
Forwards Team Pts Picks Nikita Kucherov TAM 32 64 Brayden Point TAM 30 28 Nathan MacKinnon COL 22 133 Jamie Benn DAL 19 3 Alexander Radulov DAL 18 1 Denis Gurianov DAL 17 0 Ondrej Palat TAM 17 0 Joe Pavelski DAL 17 2 Mikko Rantanen COL 17 69 Josh Bailey NYI 16 0	Defense Team Pts Picks Miro Heiskanen DAL 18 4 Victor Hedman TAM 21 26 John Klingberg DAL 20 4 Shea Theodore VGK 15 50 Cale Makar COL 14 96 Kevin Shattenkirk TAM 13 2 Goalies Team Pts Picks Robin Lehner VGK 27 4 Andrei Vasilevskiy TAM 22 39 Anton Khudobin DAL 19 0 Semyon Varlamov NYI 18 2

Next year: Lord Stanley's Pool 2020
Thanks to everyone for playing the pool this year, I hope you enjoyed it. We will be back next year, so be sure to join us again!