Eastern Playoff Update

With the Rangers`3-0 loss to Atlanta tonight, they have left themselves extremely vulnerable to being overtaken by Carolina this weekend.

	GP	W	ROW	PTS
Buffalo	80	41	35	92
NY Rangers	81	43	33	91
Carolina	80	39	33	89

If Carolina wins out against Atlanta and Tampa Bay this weekend, they will surpass the Rangers because they own the head to head tiebreaker against them. So technically, the Rangers could still beat New Jersey on Saturday and still miss the playoffs by a hair for the second year in row.

Buffalo just needs to win one of their final games to clinch a spot this year; shouldn`t be an issue as they face Columbus in their last game of the year.

A lot will be made more clear tomorrow after both Buffalo and Carolina play their 81st game.

LW Status!!

Holy crap! Yahoo is actually paying attention this year. After years of being weeks and months behind in updating positional status in the hockey pool (or just not even updating them at all), Yahoo has updated two highly ranked players in the NHL.

Pavel Datsyuk has only been playing wing on and off for Detroit for about two seasons now, so it comes as a huge surprise to see that he now has left wing status. Jeff Carter, on the other hand, has been shifted to the wing on occassion this year because of the emergence of Claude Giroux and the preference of Daniel Briere to stick to centre. He now has right wing eligibility.

2010 Finals

Last night, I ended up watching one of the mezmorizing games from last year’s Stanley Cup Finals. I thought that series was absolutely epic. It was definitely more exciting than the past two season, in which Detroit dominated Pittsburgh in ’08, then dominated them again in ’09 before losing four of five games at the hands of the trap.

The skill and storylines in this series were unreal. Skill players in the series (aka player who would probably be on the top line in Toronto):

For Philly: Briere, Richards, Carter, Gagne, Pronger, Timonen, Leino, Hartnell, Giroux and van Riemsdyk.

For Chicago: Toews, Kane, Keith, Hossa, Sharp, Bolland, Campbell, Seabrook, Versteeg and Byfuglien.

Not to mention other storylines like the awesome play of Hartnell-Briere-Leino,  Hossa’s Cup curse, Pronger vs Byfuglien, Niemi vs Leighton, Richards vs Toews, Bolland vs everyone and definitely not the least, Cup drought vs even longer Cup drought.

All in all it was a great Final and one can only hope we get something half as good in 2010-11. My prediction coming early next week.

Great THN Articles

The Hockey News has two great articles up right now on the recent NHL Entry Draft that any hockey fan should check out.

The first is an edition of “The Hot List” by Ryan Kennedy, where he looks at the top draft day steals. He dives deep into this past weekend’as action to see which teams got the best bang for their buck.

In another great edition of “Fantasy Pool Look”, Darryl Dobbs predicts the top 20 fantasy producers that will come out of the 2010 Draft. While the list is mainly a mash of the top 30 players picked (except for the Wings’ Jarnkrok: 51st overall), it definitely shows Dobber’s ability to forecast players upside and also takes into consideration their potential on the team that drafted them.

Matchups

Another great thing about this best on best tournament is some of the individual matchups of current NHL teammates that we will be able to see. I cannot even imagine the intensity. For many of these situations, these players are more than just teammates during the season. They are like brothers; they play together, room together, eat together, win and lose together. Then all of a sudden, for a two week period right in the middle of their brotherhood’s united push for the playoffs, they are ripped off of their teams and put right up against the guys that they play with all year round.

On top of personal gratification and the egotisical joy that one player would get from beating his NHL teammate, they are also fighting for their own country and all of the fans watching at home. Talk about added pressure. This intensity and competition is the kind of stuff that could alter their friendships. Although the Wings did go on to win the Cup in 2002, that must been pretty damn tough for Brett Hull and Chris Chelios to lose to their fellow Red Wings on American soil.

Obviously, some of these will not materialize due to the round robin format, but they are still fun to think about: