So here we are about a month away from the start of the Stanley Cup playoffs it is time to name your two teams who will meet in the Stanley Cup Final.

Personally, I am looking at a Tampa/Nashville final and I would have picked the Penguins instead of the Lightning but I think the Penguins will run out of gas before they can reach the Final.

Why the Tampa Bay Lightning?

I feel it is their time. Offensive fire power, an underrated defensive corp and a horse in Victor Hedman who will play special teams and will be on the ice in the closing minutes of games.

The Lightning have six players with 20 or more goals and possibly three players looking at 30 plus goals.

Nikita Kucherov is having an MVP type season and their goaltending, lead by Andrei Vasilevskiy is more than enough to get them to the SCF.

Why the Nashville Predators?

A very good all-around team. Go ahead an name their leading goal and point player, if you said Viktor Arvidsson you are right. The Predators spread the wealth around with 12 players having scored at least 10 goals. That makes them a very dangerous team and hard to defend in a best of seven series.

Their defensemen may be the best gathering of top 6 in the NHL. Four of the defenseman average over 20 minutes of ice time per game lead by P.K. Subban with 24:38.

I expect Pekka Rinne to play the majority of the playoff games but Juuse Saros is a very capable backup and can win a game when called upon. Both goaltenders a sub 2.40 gaa.

Winner of the Stanley Cup?

Not yet, let it play out and wee where this goes, but these are my two favorites for the Stanley Cup Final, an early prediction in mid-March.