Eastern Conference Winds Down

A helpful memo to New York Rangers, Buffalo Sabres, and Pittsburgh Penguins fans: better luck next year. Tonight, A Carolina Hurricanes win or tie against the Tampa Bay Lightning at home would also put the Washington Capitals in the same position as the Rangers, Sabres and Penguins.

With the exception of the Southeast division lead, every playoff spot in the East has been clinched. The Northeast division will have the most representatives; every team except for Bufallo will make the playoffs this year.

As it stands right now, the Montreal Canadiens and strong Hart Trophy candidate Jose Theodore, infused with the comeback of Saku Koivu would take on the first place Boston Bruins, owners of the second and fourth leading goal-scorers in the league in Bill Guerin (40 goals) and Glen Murray (37 goals), who came back to Boston in the Jason Allison trade early this season.

In second and seventh place in the conference are two teams that flat out don’t like each other. The Philadelphia Flyers could possibly have the most potent powerplay in the league, being able to ice a 5-man group that includes Adam Oates, Jeremy Roenick, John Leclair up front, and Eric Desjardins with Kim Johnsson on the blueline. The New Jersey Devils, two points ahead of Montreal in seventh place with a game in hand need to be as disciplined as they can be to keep the Flyer powerplay, which has struggled at times, off the ice.

Provided Carolina can hang on to third place, the first round will have them face a rejuvenated New York Islander squad. The marquee match-up would be the two top scorers for each team, the graceful veteran Ron Francis, with probably the quietest 76 points in the league, against Alexei Yashin, who will have to escape from the post-season trap that the Toronto Maple Leafs put him in last year, with the Ottawa Senators, getting s single assist in four games.

For the third year in a row, Toronto and Ottawa should face off against each other in the first round. Despite their dominance of the regular season series, the Ottawa Senators have only won two games out of the ten these two have played against each other in the playoffs. The Toronto Maple Leafs hope to have Curtis Joseph and Dimitry Yushkevitch back from their injuries, which should help a lot in shutting down the number one offense in the Eastern Conference. Hulking Zdeno Chara will look to continue the pace that has him fourth in the league in hits against the Toronto snipers of Alex Mogilny, and Mats Sundin.

Pavel Bure, Jaromir Jagr, Eric Lindros, Peter Bondra, and Alexei Kovalev. They are great talents, but not enough to get their team into the playoffs. Look for the same in the next couple of days, when I look at the possible Western Conference match-ups, and go into more detail on every series when the regular season ends.