Race for the Playoffs: In the East, Canes Can Stay Alive While Caps Can Continue Surge at BetLM

Race for the Playoffs: In the East, Canes Can Stay Alive While Caps Can Continue Surge

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. This is ProHockeyTalk’s “Race for the Playoffs.”

East­ern Con­fer­ence play­off race

y-1. Wash­ing­ton – 105 pts (2 GR)
x-2. Philadel­phia 103 pts (2 GR)
y-3. Boston – 99 pts (3 GR)
x-4. Pitts­burgh – 102 pts (2 GR)
x-5. Tampa Bay – 99 pts (2 GR)
x-6. Mon­treal – 93 pts (2 GR)
7. Buf­falo – 92 pts (2 GR)
8. NY Rangers – 91 pts (2 GR)
9. Car­olina – 87 pts (3 GR)

y – clinched divi­sion title
x – clinched play­off spot
GR – games remaining

Detroit @ Car­olina – 7 p.m. ET

Carolina’s mis­sion to make the play­offs is sim­ple on paper and highly dif­fi­cult to pull off. They must win out the rest of the way and hope that the Rangers slip up in one of their final games. Start­ing off that mis­sion fac­ing the Cen­tral Divi­sion cham­pi­ons from Detroit makes the imme­di­ate hill to climb look like a mountain.

A loss by Car­olina by any means puts the Buf­falo Sabres into the play­offs.  Car­olina loss would also put their tragic num­ber at one as the Rangers would only need to earn one point in their final two games to make the playoffs.

Florida @ Wash­ing­ton – 7 p.m. ET

The Caps have taken hold of the top seed in the East­ern Con­fer­ence thanks to their own great play of late and the Fly­ers’ dis­turb­ing swoon. The Caps can really put the pres­sure on the Fly­ers to win out to stay in the hunt for the East’s top spot by beat­ing Florida. Of course, the Caps win­ning the East could mean they end up being rewarded with fac­ing the Rangers in the first round and that might not be the match up they’d be hop­ing for. Even with­out Ryan Calla­han, the Rangers have given the Caps fits all sea­son long and a play­off series between the two would surely be more of the same.

NY Islanders @ Boston – 7 p.m. ET

The Bru­ins have an extreme out­side shot at the top spot in the East (all it takes is one point from the Caps to shut the Bru­ins out of that), but they’ve got a sin­cere chance at mov­ing up to the two seed. With a game in hand on the Fly­ers, a win over the Isles tonight would inch them to within two points of Philly. Get­ting that higher seed and a poten­tial home ice advan­tage over them in a poten­tial sec­ond or third round match-up would be huge for the Bru­ins. While home ice didn’t help them last year against Philly, we’d like to think the same mis­takes won’t be made two years in a row should they meet yet again.

[X2] News Wire Ser­vice » NHL News

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