Experts Panel: Stanley Cup Final Predictions

The Stanley Cup Final is upon us. But before we dive into the predictions, let's recap the semifinals.

As you might guess, the panel correctly selected Tampa Bay but missed out on Montreal (as many have throughout the playoffs). Tom Collins was the only one of the 16 writers who dared to pick the Canadiens in the last round, and he also correctly predicted they'd win in six games! Collins was also the only writer to go 2-for-2 in the last round, also picking Tampa Bay. The coin toss was also correct on both picks.

The panel's updated lifetime record is now 113-73 when it comes to postseason predictions.

As you probably already know, the Stanley Cup Final has Tampa Bay (3rd, Central) facing off against Montreal (4th, North). Only one panelist (yours truly, Ian Gooding) correctly predicted one of the Stanley Cup finalists (Tampa Bay) in our Playoff Round 1 Predictions. Dave Hall, Chris Kane, and I all picked Tampa Bay to go to the final in our 2020-21 Season Predictions from back in January. So like many seasons before, there have been plenty of surprises in this year's playoffs. No one will have a correct Conn Smythe winner from before the playoffs started.

Below are our writers' picks for the 2020-21 Stanley Cup winner, along with their predicted Conn Smythe winners.

Dobber   Tampa Bay in 6 Nikita Kucherov	Ian Gooding   Tampa Bay in 6 Brayden Point	Alex MacLean   Montreal in 6 Carey Price	Rick Roos Tampa Bay in 5 Brayden Point
Brennan DeSouza   Montreal in 7 Carey Price	Dave Hall   Montreal in 7 Nick Suzuki	Ryan Sheppard   Tampa Bay in 6 Andrei Vasilevskiy	Grant Campbell   Tampa Bay in 5 Brayden Point
Scott Royce Tampa Bay in 5 Brayden Point	Tom Collins   Montreal in 6 Carey Price	Eric Daoust   Tampa Bay in 7 Brayden Point	Chris Kane   Tampa Bay in 6 Brayden Point
Mario Prata   Tampa Bay in 6 Carey Price	Flip Livingstone