It's June 7th - that can only mean one thing: that an NHL champion has been crowned. The Ducks beat the Senators in five games. Too bad - I wanted Ottawa to win, but Anaheim definitely deserved it. Their defensive style is impossible to beat. Sorry Lemieux, but that's still how the game is played.

Looking back at my predictions, I didn't predict anything very accurately other than the first two rounds of the Eastern conference playoffs. I only picked one first round team correctly in the West, and that was Detroit. I had the East correct all the way except Ottawa beat Buffalo. I'm still a little surprised by that.

Looking way back at my 2006-2007 season predictions, let's see how I did:

  • The Wild will finish second in their division behind Calgary. I was actually close on this one. The only thing different is that the Wild finished second behind Vancouver.
  • The Wild will make the playoffs but won't get past the semis. Kinda close - they didn't make it past the quarters.
  • Nashville will win the Western Conference title. It's their time. They had a good chance for this but got lost in the late-season race for the best record. I think Detroit and Anaheim beat them in the end. Anaheim pretty much held the best record for most of the season.
  • Buffalo will win the East. Buffalo has built their team well around Drury with Vanek, Miller, and other solid players. Correct! I'm a winner.
  • Buffalo will win the cup. Nope.
  • This will be Modano's last season. No way to know on this one yet. Honestly, I'm not sure why I made this prediction.
  • The Penguins will finish last in their division again. Mario, fire your GM, or get out of Pittsburgh. I was dead wrong on this one. Mario's club was able to win with offense this year and make the playoffs. I guess they'll do ok. I'll still be a naysayer though - they can only go so far if they rely on Crosby and pure offense.

As for next year... well, I'll save any predictions until after the draft and after the free agent period. There are two main things I'm hoping for next season though, and they are 1) that the Wild will do better than this year and 2) that the league will make rule changes to further encourage scoring or restrict defensive play - and will also begin to clean up its image. Sometimes being an NHL fan feels a little embarassing because of the violent nature of the players. Not the violent nature of the game, but the players. They leave it all on the ice and it's not personal, but I think the amount of violence and injuries is getting silly in this day and age of sports.

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