Well, those Round 1 picks didn’t quite go as planned. All four division winners (Tampa Bay, Washington, Nashville, Calgary) have now been eliminated. ALL FOUR. Has there ever been a first round with so many upsets?

Regardless, the Dobber Hockey panel is back to give this another try for Round 2. I won’t embarrass anyone by posting individual round totals (let’s just say mine turned out horribly), but our esteemed panel checked in with a (cough, cough) 2-6 record. The only teams the panel picked correctly were Boston (over Toronto) and St. Louis (over Winnipeg). Check out our full list of Round 1 picks here.  

Because hockey “intelligence” didn’t factor much into the Round 1 results, we’re going to compare by tossing a coin for each of the series results to find out if that might be a better predictor.

The panel’s lifetime overall record after the first round is 91-51.

Here are the Round 2 matchups:

Eastern Conference

Boston Bruins vs. Columbus Blue Jackets

New York Islanders vs. Carolina Hurricanes

Western Conference

St. Louis Blues vs. Dallas Stars

San Jose Sharks vs. Colorado Avalanche

About the panel's picks:

This may not reflect who the actual Stanley Cup favorite is, but St. Louis was picked as the most likely team to advance to the conference final. This may have as much to do with the panel having a lack of faith in Dallas as it does about St. Louis’ strengths. Can likely Calder Trophy finalist Jordan Binnington (.908 SV% in 2019 playoffs) continue his incredible run? Or can Vezina Trophy finalist Ben Bishop (.945 SV% in 2019 playoffs) lead the Stars to another upset?

The toughest series to pick was Boston vs. Columbus. Of the teams remaining, the Bruins (107 points) have the best record; however, we’ve learned that total regular-season points means very little in these playoffs. The Blue Jackets are better than a typical 8-seed and the logic might be that if they can beat Tampa Bay, they can also beat Boston. One team will be more well-rested than the other, which might count for something.

For the coin toss, the team with home-ice advantage was given heads. The type of coin used was a loonie that is no luckier than your average Canadian one-dollar coin. Each team was given seven games.

Need a do-over on your playoff bracket? NHL.com has a Second Chance Bracket.

Here are our full results, with the consensus picks in the final box of the table below.

Agree? Disagree? Comments?

About the panel:

Dobber launched this website in 2005 after he was the fantasy hockey columnist for The Hockey News website, The Fantasy Sports Network, and a contributor to The Forecaster. DobberHockey has since grown into the Dobber Sports Network and has work can be found across the Internet, including on Sportsnet.

Ian Gooding is the managing editor of DobberHockey and a regular writer on the daily Ramblings beat. He has also contributed to many other sites, including Sportsnet, Today’s Slapshot, Kukla’s Korner, and fantasyhockey.com.

Mike Clifford is an associate editor of DobberHockey and contributor for Rotowire and other fantasy hockey ventures.

Cam Robinson is the managing editor at DobberProspects and, along with Ian Gooding and Mike Clifford, collaborates to Daily Ramblings. He is a regular guest on Vancouver sports talk radio.

Mario Prata is the manager of special projects and marketing for Dobber Sports. He is also a co-founder of the famous The Sports Forecaster magazine.

Eric Daoust manages our valued Frozen Pool section.

Tom Collins writes the weekly Top 10 column that can be found here every Monday.

Rick Roos authors the weekly Roos Let Loose column every Wednesday. He is the former Cage Match writer for Dobber Hockey.

Adam Daly-Frey checks out what's coming down the pipe with the Looking Ahead column every Friday.

Alex MacLean authors the salary cap column Capped, which can be found here every Thursday.

Brennan DeSouza writes the weekly line combinations column every Tuesday, and gives us the latest injury information every Wednesday.

Brayden Olafson pens the weekly prospect column The Journey that can be found here every Saturday. He has also contributed to Dobber Prospects.

Grant Campbell writes the Frozen Pool Forensics column on Fridays.

Cam Metz pens the Eastern Edge column that is published on Tuesdays.

Chris Kane writes the weekly Wild West column every Monday.

Flip Livingstone is our Saturday game picks author. He is a former NHL writer for theScore with past experience at such outlets as Postmedia, Hockey Night in Canada, and the CBC.

Michael Zacour is our Geek of the Week author and a regular contributor on the Forum.

Enjoy the playoffs, folks!