NHL 2016 Playoffs: Fear the Fin picks the Conference Finals

Before I get to our picks, let's check out the Fear the Fin Bracket Challenge leaderboard!

Unsurprisingly the Sharks winning means good things for whole lot of the brackets in the Fear the Fin group. Don't look at my bracket, it's very bad. Let's also take a peek at how the staff did in picking three of the four series from the second round of the playoffs.

All but one of us picked the Sharks to beat the Predators, but nobody thought the series would go to seven games. Woops. It's a similar story in the Blues/Stars series — all but one of us picked the Blues, but only Aaron picked St. Louis to take seven games. The Penguins/Capitals series is the one the staff performed worst on. Not to toot my own horn, but I was the only one to pick the Penguins in the correct number of games while a pair of other staff writers took the Pens in seven.

Here's the leaderboard amongst staff writers after two rounds of playoff action. Condolences to staff writer Sam Blazer who wasn't able to get his picks in on time for the second round — but there's still points to be made up in the final four. I gave 10 points for each correct first round pick, 20 for each correct second round pick and five bonus points for picking the series in the correct number of games.

Now on to our Conference Finals picks!

Go Sharks!