Friday, April 6, 2012

Hockey Takes a Cue From Baseball

Hockey seems to be taking a page out of the last day of the 2011 baseball season.  For those who do not remember in a period of time of just over two hours the teams in and out of the 2011 post season took dramatic turns and allowed two great comebacks to put the Rays and Cardinals (the eventual 2011 World Series Champions) into the playoffs and knocked out the Red Sox and Phillies.

As the NHL enters the final day of the season there are numerous games that will affect the first round of the playoffs as well as the winner of the President’s Trophy, for the best regular season record.  Let’s start in the Pacific Division.  The Los Angeles Kings, San Jose Sharks and Phoenix Coyotes are all in the playoffs.  Currently the three teams have the third, seventh and eighth seeds, respectively.  Depending on the final day of the season the Kings could go from third to eighth.  If the Sharks beat the Kings and Coyotes beat Minnesota the Sharks move to third and the Kings drop to eighth with the Coyotes moving up to seventh.

Meanwhile in the Central Division if the Detroit Red Wings win and the Nashville Predators lose Detroit will get the fourth seed and home ice advantage over the Predators.

The Eastern Division is a little bit more set, but that does not mean nothing is at stake.  The most important game is the New York Rangers and Washington Capitals game in New York.  If the Rangers win they will win the President’s Trophy and then face the Capitals in the opening round of the playoffs.  The Capitals still have a lot to play for as well.  If they win and either the Florida Panthers or Ottawa Senators lose then the Capitals could move to the third seed (Florida loss) or seventh seed (Ottawa loss).  On the other hand as long as the Rangers do no worse than the Vancouver Canucks they will still win the President’s Trophy.

Although there will be only eight playoff series in the opening round, with two days left in the season there are 29 different playoff combinations that can happen.  Hopefully, hockey will not make any changes to its playoff system to keep excitement in the game until the season is over as opposed to baseball which on the heels of a great final day of last season has changed the post season eligibility rules so that all of the excitement they had last year would have been a dull night with very little at stake.

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