NHL20 Sim: Stanley Cup Final Preview

Well we’ve finally arrived. After simulating 12 regular season games and 18 Flames playoff games, we’re at the Stanley Cup Finals. The Calgary Flames will be taking on the Boston Bruins who make their second straight trip to the Finals after being losing in Game 7 last year to the St. Louis Blues in real life. Let’s take a quick look at how the Conference Finals finished up:

East

(1) Boston Bruins vs (4) Philadelphia Flyers (Bruins win series 4-3)

West

(2) Colorado Avalanche vs (6) Calgary Flames (Flames win series 4-1)

Top 10 Scorers in Playoffs

Bracket

Stanley Cup Finals Preview

The Flames and Bruins are meeting in the Stanley Cup Final. As mentioned before, this is the second year in a row that the Bruins have reached the Final and fourth time in the last ten years. On the other hand it’s the Flames first trip to the Finals since 2004 and just the fourth appearance in franchise history.

The Flames reached the finals by first dispatching the Coyotes in the Best of 3 play-in, taking out the Knights in a Best of 5, the Blues in 6 games, and the Avalanche in 5 games. Boston on the other hand got a first round bye, took out the Rangers in 4, the Panthers in 5, and Flyers in 7.

While there aren’t any players on the Bruins rosters with ties to the Flames, there are a few on the Flames side with a connection to Boston. Most notably Milan Lucic takes on the team where he ascended to stardom over eight seasons with the team. Geoff Ward also returns to Boston as the Flames head coach, he spent seven seasons with Boston as an assistant coach from 2007-2014 which included their championship season. Finally there’s notable Boston College grads Johnny Gaudreau and Noah Hanifin.

The teams split their real-life games in 2019-20, with the Bruins winning 4-3 in Calgary, and then the Flames winning 5-2 in Boston four days later. Here’s a look at how the entire Flames team is performing points-wise heading into the series:

Game 1 of the series will go tonight (Monday May 25) at 7:30 PM MT on our Youtube page. Each game after will be every second night as usual with times TBD. We will share the links to the games on both our Twitter and Facebook page closer to puck drop.

by Michael MacGillivray