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Staff Picks: Lightning or Avalanche for the Stanley Cup? Our vote's split

The 2022 Stanley Cup Final is set: Colorado vs. Tampa Bay, facing off for glory.

Back-to-back defending champions, the Lightning enter the Final as underdogs despite employing one of the NHL's best players at each position in Nikita Kucherov, Victor Hedman and Andrei Vasilevskiy. Their path saw them stave off a talented Maple Leafs team in seven games, followed by a second-round sweep of the league's best regular-season team in the Panthers before knocking off the Rangers in six.

For a big chunk of those games, the Lightning were without star center Brayden Point, who suffered a lower-body injury in Game 7 of the first-round.