These are best of seven series so you need to let me know whether you think the teams that you pick are going to win in 4, 5, 6, or 7 games. For each winning team you pick correctly you will get four points, but a point will be taken away for each game you are off in the number of games that you predicted they would win. If you call a series exactly you will receive 1 additional bonus point. For example, if you picked Carolina to win in four games and they did, you would receive five points (4 for picking the correct team + 1 bonus point for calling it exactly). If you picked them to win in seven and they actually won in four then you would receive only one point:

4 points - 3 games off = 1 point remaining.

10 percent of the pot will be awarded to the winner of each of the first three rounds. The money will go to the person that accumulates the most points in each round, not the leader after each round. After the Stanley Cup Finals the leader of the pool will take home 45 percent of the pot, second place will take home 15 percent, and third place will take home 10 percent of the pot. In order to make the first rounds even more important a certain number of participants, depending on the number of entries, will be dropped. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 percent of the total participants will be dropped after each round.

In order to break up a tie for any of the rounds, I am asking that you submit a guess for the total number of goals scored in each of the rounds. So, in the first round if you think that there is going to be an average of 7 goals a game, and five games a series, and there are 8 different series, then your guess for the total number of goals could be:

7 X 5 X 8 = 280

For each round that you submit picks I will need a guess for the total number of goals that you think will be scored in the upcoming round. This will be used as a tie-breaker for the participants getting dropped after each round as well as for determining a winner for each round. So, in summary to become a participant, you need to send me, before Wednesday at 5:00pm, your picks including the number of games, for each of the 8 first round series and the total number of goals that you think will be scored in the first round. The person at the end of the Playoffs who has accumulated the most points will be the winner.

Please send me your picks by Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. The games will begin that evening and I will not be able to take any entries once the games begin. Good luck and I will keep you updated on who is leading the pool as series are won. I would like to receive all of the money by the end of the first round. You can either give the twenty dollars to a member of my family or mail it to me at:

Jon Erensen