The National Hockey League is about to enter the Final of what many consider to be the most grueling tournament in all of professional sport, The Stanley Cup Finals. As always everyone and their mother has an opinion about who will win this year's matchup between the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Montreal Canadiens, although I would argue that public opinion seems to lean heavily in favor of the Lightning who are coming into this series as heavy favorites.
That being said the Habs have been underdogs in every series they have played so far having defeated the Maple Leafs, Winnipeg Jets, and Golden Knights all of whom were significant favorites coming into those series, and that appears to have been enough to convince at least 1 prognosticator about their ability to do it again in the Stanley Cup Final.
On Monday EA Sports NHL, the official video game partner of the league, ran a simulation of the upcoming Cup Final through their video game engine for NHL 21 and that simulation predicted a hard fought 7 game series for the Final. According to the simulation the Canadiens would go on to defeat the Lightning in 7 games, winning games 1, 3, 4, and finally Game 7 in order to do so. The simulation predicted every game in the series will be hard fought with nearly every one of those games finishing with the teams no further apart than by a 2 goal margin. The only lopsided game of the series in fact was a 5 - 1 victory for the Lightning in Game 2.
Here's a full break down of the games courtesy of EA Sports NHL:
Fans of the Canadiens may view this as a good omen for their chances in this series but some have been quick to call it exactly the opposite. The most recent prediction from EA Sports involving the Canadiens had them falling at the hands of the Las Vegas Golden Knights in their semifinal series, which as we all know now proved to be entirely incorrect.
In fact they also predicted the Islanders to make the Finals over the Lightning on the other side of the bracket.
