Stanley Cup Finals 2018

Posted by Vanessa Lotz | May 24, 2018 | Sports

What’s better than a sports championship? Two sports championships! And that is exactly what makes May such a great month…. aside from the whole beginning of summer thing.

Next week marks the start of the NHL’s Stanley Cup Finals and the NBA Playoffs. Both sports span several months of the year, and draw the attention of eager sports fans from around the world.

 

Stanley Cup Finals

 

Every Stanley Cup series is highly anticipated and loaded with excitement, but this year’s series will be made especially unique because either team will make history by winning their first Stanley Cup. If the Washington Capitals take the Cup, it will be for the first time ever after 44 years since inception. If the Vegas Golden Knights take the Cup, it will be the first title for the inaugural season.

The Washington Capitals have been around since 1974 and have only made one show at the Stanley Cup, but have never won. To make matters even worse, the city who also hosts NFL, NBA, and MLB teams hasn’t won any championships since 1991, when the home team won the Super Bowl, and the last time that any of the teams made an appearance in the finals of their sport was when the Red Wings swept the Capitals in 1998.

On the Capitals lineup, team captain, Alex Ovechkin, is leading the charge towards a franchise championship no matter what comes in his way. It’s been a long time coming for the team, and particularly for the gap-toothed 32 year-old left winger who is indisputably the best goal-scorer of his generation. With the support of goalie, Braden Hotly, who is at the very top of his game, and an all-star team of players hungry for a Stanley Cup, we expect this to be an aggressive and drawn out series.

In addition to the Capital’s fierce determination, this series is made particularly interesting by the fact that several Knights players were drafted directly from the Capitals team last year.

The NHL’s newest team, the Las Vegas Golden Knights, went an astonishing 2-0-0 against each team during their inaugural season, and not due to fleeting speculation that their success was rigged. This team was truly lucky during last June’s NHL expansion draft when team after team made strategic trades to keep star players or make other maneuvers to benefit their respective organizations (click here to read a full overview of the 2017 draft). These seemingly strategic trades, however, allowed the Vegas Golden Knight team to scoop up a portfolio of players who also all appeared to be at just the right point in their careers to make a big splash on a new team. Goalie, Marc-Andre Fleury is gearing up to have the best goaltending postseason, which is sure to help the Knights was they go into battle against the Caps with support from alternate captains James Neal, Deryk Engelland, David Perron and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare. Best part? The Penguins actually paid the Knights to take the player off their team.

The finals begin Monday evening in Las Vegas, and are guaranteed to be pack the stands as fans from both teams watch the Caps and Knights duke it out for the Cup. And if you find the whole sport incredibly boring, then you can at least enjoy Vegas’ unusual pregame show, done in true Vegas fashion with a cosplaying Knich dueling a mascot for the team. Scroll down to get your clients into the game!

 

2018 Stanley Cup Final Schedule

(all start times 8pm ET)

Game 1: Monday, May 28 @ 8:00pm EST

T-Mobile Arena (Las Vegas, NV)

Game 2: Wednesday, May 30 @ 8:00pm EST

T-Mobile Arena (Las Vegas, NV)

Game 3: Saturday, June 2 @ 8:00pm EST

Capital One Arena (Washington DC)

Game 4: Monday, June 4 @ 8:00pm EST

Capital One Arena (Washington DC)

*Game 5: Thursday, June 7 @ 8:00pm EST (if necessary)

T-Mobile Arena (Las Vegas, NV)

*Game 6: Sunday, June 10 @ 8:00pm EST (if necessary)

Capital One Arena (Washington DC)

*Game 7: Wednesday, June 13 @ 8:00pm EST (if necessary)

T-Mobile Arena (Las Vegas, NV)

 

 

NBA Playoffs

 

Keep an eye out for next week’s NBA playoffs announcement, when we know whether the Celtics or Cavaliers will face the Rockets or Warriors.

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