3 NHL dark horses to make a Stanley Cup run in 2019-20
By Kyle McKenna
With January on the horizon, here are three dark horse teams that can make a run at the 2019-20 Stanley Cup Final.
While NHL fans alike are hoping for another Cinderella story similar to the 2018-19 Stanley Cup champion St. Louis Blues, there aren’t any basement teams in the league standings this season who can replicate that historic run.
In fact, there’s zero chance of that happening.
However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t dark horses to make a Stanley Cup run this year. Here are three dark horse NHL teams that can turn heads around the league come April.
3. San Jose Sharks
The San Jose Sharks aren’t strangers when it boils down to being picked as a legitimate Stanley Cup contender.
Though, the waters are murky for the Sharks in the Bay Area and it’s been that way since the team was eliminated in six games by the St. Louis Blues during the 2018-19 Western Conference Finals.
While the Teal departed ways with a notable skater such as Joe Pavelski, the expectations entering this season were still a run at the franchise’s first-ever Stanley Cup championship. Two months into the 2019-20 campaign and the Sharks are on the outside looking in for the playoffs.
San Jose has struggled for stretches at a time too often this season, as they fired its head coach in Pete DeBoer and now finds itself as a dark horse to make a run at a Stanley Cup. Perhaps San Jose inching its way into the playoffs and acting as the underdogs is the hidden formula the Sharks needed after all this time…