Flyers vs. Canadiens tomorrow night at 8 p.m. Let’s go baby.

Prediction pieces are starting to come out, and most are straightforward, with the #1 seed beating the #8 seed, but some contrarians are deviating. They’re over-thinking it.

Take this article at ESPN, for instance, where 12 of their hockey experts pick the Flyers to win in five, six, or seven games, but three folks are riding with Montreal instead:

 

Arda Ocal, Sean Allen, and Sach Chandan go immediately to the top of the shit list. Canadiens in six? Who do these guys think they are?

Yes, Carey Price was hot in the qualifying rounds, but the Flyers aren’t the Penguins. They come at you in blue collar, lunch pail-carrying waves, and Price will eventually lose the war of attrition. He’ll wither under the constant pressure and barrage of shots. Les Habitants will be forechecked into nothingness.

The only thing making me nervous is that this Chandan guy picked the Habs over the Penguins and got it right. He was the only person in the group to do it:

Ehhhh… whatever.

Let’s check in with some more experts out there.

At USA Today, they have blurbs from three of their hockey writers:

Jimmy Hascup: Canadiens in 7. It all comes down to goalie Carey Price. Montreal might not seem to have the firepower, but this team had strong underlying metrics all year and a coach who knows how to game plan in the playoffs.

Mike Brehm: Flyers in 6. Flyers goalie Carter Hart should be able to match saves with Price, and the Flyers have a deeper offense. In fact, they went 3-0 in the round robin without a power play goal and without goals from Claude Giroux, Jakub Voracek and Travis Konecny.

Jace Evans: Flyers in 5. Philadelphia was rolling before the break and did not appear to miss a beat in the restart, dominating play in its round-robin games. The Habs getting here has been a nice story, but the Flyers are deeper and simply have higher-quality talent.

“The Flyers are deeper and simply have higher-quality talent.”

I agree with Evans. Hascup is wrong, and when the Flyers win we’ll clip that blurb and give it the “Old Takes Exposed” treatment on social media.

NHL.com has a long list of predictions from their people, and going down it reveals 16 picks for the Flyers and zero for the Canadiens, so that’s nice to see.

Flyers win this in six games. This team has depth, they’re in great form, and the young goalkeeper’s first playoff experience will take place in an empty arena. He’s not going to have to travel. He’s not going to have to win in the Bell Center in front of 21,000 opposing fans. We’re removing all of the external factors and just playing hockey, which means the better team, the Flyers, will prevail.