VSN Presents: S94 VHLE Playoff Preview

[Baby Boomer 764]

Welcome everyone,

 

After a really exciting regular season and an end of the season full of twists and turns, we are now ready for an epic playoffs. The once again dominant Cologne Express are going to face the surprise of the season the Vasteras Iron Eagles who made the playoffs instead of the Stockholm Vikings who were only 5 points behind the Iron Eagles. And the Rome Gladiators are going to play against the Bratislava Watchmen.

 

Semi-final #1 – Cologne Express (1)  vs Vasteras Iron Eagles (4) 

 

Regular season series: COL wins regular season series 9-4-1.

 

This series is the only series I think I can predict who will win pretty much without a doubt. Indeed, once again the Cologne Express are extremely good and just secured another King’s Cup with a total of 99 points. They finished the regular season with 14 points more than the second in the standings, the Rome Gladiators, and with 19 more points than their opponents in the first round, the Vasteras Iron Eagles. The Cologne Express can count on forwards like Maverick Goncalves @leandrofg, Alexandros Mograine @sliceruser and BjorkaBjorn BjornaBjorkson @JardyB10 and experienced defensemen like Joseph Dubois @Dubois and Scrungle Bungle @Novanod. On the other hand, if the Vasteras Iron Eagles wants to have any chance at winning this series, players like Swinsola @Swinsola Matthew Highmore @NineIQ v2 and Eugene Ryanheart @jesse115 will have to step up big time. Jorgen Lovstrom @Pifferfish will also have to bring his game to another level and be really strong in the cage to help Vasteras, I can see him steal one or two games.

 

VSN Prediction: Cologne wins in 5 games.

 

 

Semi-final #2 – Rome Gladiators (2)  vs Bratislava Watchmen (3) 

 

Regular season series: BRA wins regular season series 8-6-0.

 

Contrary to the other series, this one should be really tight and probably the toughest one to predict, indeed the Watchmen won the regulation season series but only 8 wins to 6 wins and one of Bratislava's win was in overtime, so we can not really make a prediction based on this. On the other end, the Rome Gladiators had a really strong end to the season by winning 18 of their last 23 games. In addition, only 2 points were separating the two teams in the standings at the end of the season. For the Rome Gladiators, Pombo @samx Nathan Ecker @Nathan_8 and Vanuza Kolesinska @chikn will take care of scoring goals as they had 31, 30 and 27 goals in the regular season. However, the real force of the Gladiators is at the blue line as both Jillian Woods @jacobcarson877 (90) and Erik Thorvaldsson @Tetricide (72) finished the season with at least a point per game. Finally, in the net they can count on a really young goalie who is improving really fast and can already be considered one of the best goalie in the league in Rodger Eagles @Greg_Di. Now, for the Bratislava Watchmen, Pierre Marc Bouchard @Gaikoku-hito and Steve French @Seabass will take charge of the offense of the team and Andrew Skilton @ace_five_ and Bollos de Trueno @Thunder will have to stop the opponents from scoring goals if they want to win this series.

 

VSN Prediction: Rome wins in 7 games.

 

 

Final – Cologne Express (1)  vs Rome Gladiators (2) 

 

Regular season series: COL wins regular season series 9-5-1.

 

Once again this series will be really exciting to watch and I believe that we will have a close finals (I hope at least). Indeed, the Cologne Express won the regular season series 9 games to 6, but like I said earlier, Rome had a really strong finish and won their last three games against Cologne. So I think that everything can be possible and both team could very well win the Renaissance Cup. However, we have to look at the history and the regular season and I believe that Cologne will come out on top of this battle. They can count on good leaders like BjorkaBjorn BjornaBjorkson, Alexandros Mograine and Joseph Dubois who have a lot of experience in the series and can lead this young team to the promised land. If the Rome Gladiators want to win the Renaissance Cup, they will also have to count on their leaders Nathan Ecker, Jillian Woods, Erik Thorvaldsson and Wally Lose @youloser1337 as they have a really really young team with not a lot of experience. 

 

VSN Prediction: Cologne wins in 6 games.

 

That’s all for me, thanks everyone for reading, I wish you all good playoffs and see you in another VSN article!

Edited July 7 by Alex

[rory 1,945]