The End Of Round Three

After a power outage left this article hanging until the wee hours of the morning, I finally have it finished. I know some of you were hoping - even praying - for a big jump in points, and we had a few people climb the leaderboard in impressive fashion after this round had ended. I do want to highlight those who had excellent rounds in the Conference Finals as the HBIC Playoff Pool is into its final push with the Stanley Cup Final starting on Wednesday. The newest spreadsheet is at the bottom of this, so make sure it comes in BEFORE THE START OF GAME ONE! Two days is more than enough time to think about who you'd like to see win, especially considering that this Final will start on the left coast. Here are your Round Three highlights.

Chicago vs. Los Angeles

One entrant had a monster series with these two teams playing. Jay F. correctly predicted the winning team in Games One through Three, Six, and Seven for a quick five points. He added the Duncan Keith game-winner in Game One and the Patrick Kane game-winner in Game Six for an additional four points. And because Jay called Los Angeles to win in game Seven, he also correctly predicted the right number of games and the correct team advancing for an additional five points. After all was said and done, Jay walked away with an impressive 14 points for the highest total of the round in any series! Well done, Jay!

Average score for this series: 6 points.

Montreal vs. NY Rangers

We had one entrant stand alone in this series with his predictions as well. Michael J. correctly predicted the winning team in Games One, Four, Five, and Six for four points. He added the Chris Kreider game-winner for an added two points. He also correctly predicted that the New York Rangers would advance to the Stanley Cup Final in six games for another five points. After totaling it all up, Michael put up an impressive 11 points in this series! Excellent predicting, Michael!

Average score for this series: 5 points.

Best Round

The round belonged to two people who had the top scores after the Kings finally won in overtime. Jay F., who had an impressive series in the Chicago-Los Angeles battle, earned a total of 19 points between the two series. While his predictions in the Canadiens-Rangers series didn't pan out as well as the Western Conference Final, he still managed to post one of the two best scores in this round. Excellent job, Jay!

The second entrant who scored 19 points in this round was Westin F. Westin put up solid numbers in both series with his wise and clairvoyant predictions, helping him to share the best total in this round. One of the keys for Westin was predicting both the length of games and the series winner in both series correctly for ten points. That kind of scoring will always help... as we'll see. Great job in this round, Westin, and that leads me to...

Overall Leader

... the overall leader where Westin F. finds his name! The HBIC Playoff Pool leaderboard has been updated, so check out your name on there if you want to know where you are. Westin currently has a three-point lead over the rest of the field, and he's built this lead and climbed the board by consistently being one of the top scorers in each round. Whatever mojo he's got going is certainly helping his predictions, and, with one round remaining, he may end up the 2014 champion!

The Stanley Cup Final starts on Wednesday, so the new spreadsheet has been configured. Again, to expedite the marking, I have created a pretty little Excel document that can be opened in both Microsoft Excel and OpenOffice Calc. Fill this out and send it back to me WITH YOUR NAME AS THE NAME OF THE EXCEL DOCUMENT (ie. Teebz.xls). Once more, if you are going to use the .numbers format that Apple machines use, please see if you can save the document in .pdf or some sort of common format between the Apple and Windows platforms. That's my only request from all participants! And be sure to send it here!

Click here to download if you missed the link above. Get your picks in before Game One of the Stanley Cup Final! If there's a deadline problem, email me! Good luck to all participants, and may the odds be ever in your favor!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!