Depending on who you asked, the Conn Smythe race was fairly wide open at the start of the Stanley Cup Final.

The favorites for a lot of oddsmakers were a couple of Panthers: Matthew Tkachuk and Sergei Bobrovski. Fair enough. Tkachuk has become the King of Hockey in this playoff, scored a handful of huge game-winning goals, and any time you can get People magazine to do a feature on a hockey player, that's a positive. Bobrovsky's stats speak for themselves.

Once you get down to third, it was Jack Eichel, and again, more than reasonable. Then Adin Hill and William Karlsson showed up and you were starting to get into wacky territory. If Karlsson in particular won the award, it would be a bit of a surprise, even if he has been rather good in this postseason.

And then, all the way down at ninth, w