Kings or Coyotes Can Clinch, Ducks-Sharks Battle in Anaheim at LinesMaker

Kings or Coyotes Can Clinch, Ducks-Sharks Battle in Anaheim

With the sea­son wind­ing down and the play­off pic­ture sort­ing itself out, we’ll be tak­ing a look at the night’s games and how they’ll poten­tially affect the play­off races.

West­ern Con­fer­ence play­off race

p – 1. Van­cou­ver – 113 pts (3 GR)
y-2. San Jose – 103 pts (3 GR)
y-3. Detroit – 102 pts (3 GR)
4. Nashville – 97 pts (2 GR)
5. Phoenix – 96 pts (3 GR)
6. Los Ange­les – 96 pts (3 GR)
7. Ana­heim – 93 pts (3 GR)
8. Chicago – 93 pts (3 GR)
9. Dal­las – 91 pts (3 GR)
10. Cal­gary – 91 pts (2 GR)

p– clinched Pres­i­dents’ Tro­phy
z – clinched con­fer­ence title
y – clinched divi­sion title
x – clinched play­off spot

St. Louis @ Chicago – 8 p.m. ET

Chicago was able to get a point last night, but in their quest to make the play­offs, get­ting two points each night is the goal and right now they’re tee­ter­ing on the edge of trou­ble. With a pair of games against Cen­tral Divi­sion cham­pion Detroit await­ing them this week­end, beat­ing St. Louis is a must for the Hawks. With the Stars streak­ing in the right direc­tion and with a pair of games com­ing up against Col­orado and their final game in Min­nesota, they can’t expect Dal­las to go away eas­ily. If the Black­hawks want to get back to the play­offs to defend their Stan­ley Cup, it starts tonight against the Blues.

St. Louis being a long­time rival of Chicago, they’re eager to put a hurt­ing on Chicago’s hopes and with St. Louis play­ing bet­ter of late (win­ners of three of their last four, and five of their last seven) it’s not going to be easy. It never is this time of year. If Chicago wants to avoid hav­ing their hated rivals from Detroit help­ing decide their fate com­pletely, they’ll get the job done tonight.

San Jose @ Ana­heim – 10 p.m. ET

The Sharks have every­thing tied up in the divi­sion as they won the Pacific Divi­sion after dis­pos­ing of the Kings on Mon­day night.  Ana­heim is still in a per­ilous posi­tion how­ever. After drop­ping their last two games, they’re still in dan­ger of being passed by Chicago or caught by Dal­las and Cal­gary. While the Ducks own the tiebreaker over all of those teams, get­ting far enough ahead of them to make it not mat­ter would be ideal. Hav­ing to do it against the Sharks tonight and wrap­ping the year up with a home-and-home bat­tle against Los Ange­les doesn’t sound pleasant.

Ana­heim hasn’t got­ten the stel­lar goal­tend­ing that’s been sus­tain­ing them this sea­son in their last two losses allow­ing four goals in both games. While Jonas Hiller still tries to shake off ver­tigo, it’s on Ray Emery and Dan Ellis to hold things down. Doing that against a Sharks team that’s been light­ing every­one up in the sec­ond half of the year is daunt­ing. The Sharks aren’t with­out some­thing to play for as they’re hop­ing to lock down the two seed in the West and get an edge on Detroit there. These teams greatly dis­like each other so if you’re in need of a real primer for the play­offs, wait­ing out til the end of the night for this one would be a good idea.

Phoenix @ Los Ange­les – 10:30 p.m. ET

It doesn’t get any more cut and dried than this. The win­ner of tonight’s game punches their ticket to the play­offs while the loser con­tin­ues to hang in an ele­vated state of limbo. Tonight’s win­ner also gets to jump into the fourth seed in the West for the night and con­tinue their bat­tle with Nashville and oth­ers to see who can take down the mid­dle two seeds to face each other in the play­offs and hope­fully avoid San Jose or Detroit.

L.A. has had their ups and downs since Anze Kopi­tar went out of the lineup for the remain­der of the sea­son and play­offs. They’ve been able to stand tall against the weaker teams, but against the likes of San Jose and Van­cou­ver they’ve strug­gled. How they do against Phoenix pro­vides a good mea­sur­ing stick to see where they’re at and where Phoenix is at as well. After Phoenix rat­tled off a five game win streak a cou­ple weeks ago, they’ve been flip-flopping between wins and losses. Get­ting con­sis­tent would do them a world of good head­ing into the play­offs and beat­ing a short­handed Kings team would be a good way to do it.

Related Posts:

• Five Thoughts: How You Stop Wor­ry­ing About Shutouts and Love the Playoffs
• Canucks Hang on After Hec­tic Fin­ish, Take 2–0 Series Lead Over Blackhawks
• Coy­otes Hang on to Beat the Ducks
• Coy­otes Can’t Blame Sharks Rout on Mike Smith Alone
• With Prospects Wan­ing, Coy­otes’ Fate Could Be Decided While Still in Playoffs

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