lordstanley

The 16 NHL playoff teams are set. In the East, 4 of the 8 teams are different than last year's playoff teams. Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Ottawa replace Toronto, Florida, Washington and New Jersey. Of the four that didn't make it either this season or last season, the Wings have missed 10 straight years, the Blue Jackets have missed 6 straight years, and the Rangers and Islanders both have missed 2 straight years. In the West, only 2 of the 8 teams are different than last year's playoff teams. Anaheim and Utah are in, Winnipeg and St. Louis are out.

Meanwhile the Leafs wisely blow a 5-3 3rd period lead to lose 6-5 in regulation and have all but locked up a bottom 5 spot. Which means Boston will have to wait until next year to use a 1st rounder from Toronto. The Leafs must not, cannot, win the lottery!

Can’t believe the Flyers are going to the playoffs and the Wings aren’t. Philly was last in the East last year with 76 points and had missed the playoffs the past 5 years. They were 12 points behind Detroit and tied with the Leafs on January 25th.

Wings lose in shootout. 92 points with one game to go, the most for the Wings since 2016’s 93.

Stirring comeback from 3-1 down to tie it at 3, lol, on goals by DeBrincat and Kasper

I'd put Celebrini, Schaefer and Bedard in that order, but that trio of #1 picks is far superior to the three #1s before them - Slafkosky, Power and Lafreniere - even with Slafkosky coming into his own now and playing like a typical, say, #3 overall pick.

I like the trajectory of San Jose. Have missed the playoffs 7 straight years but were in the conference finals as recently as 2019 and didn't bottom out until 2024. Of course one can easily ask where they'd be without Macklin Celebrini but they sucked at the right time and won the right lottery, to complement u-24s like Will Smith, William Eklund, Collin Graf (44 Pts in 78 GPs this season from a 23 year old who went undrafted), Michael Misa (moved down 1 in lottery but still got #2 overall in 2025), Igor Chernyshov (16 PTs in 25GP this season from a 2024 early 2nd rounder), Sam Dickinson (69 GP this year from a 2024 #11 overall).

The Wings’ collapse has been so severe that even if they had hung on to beat New Jersey on Saturday, even if they had won last Tuesday against Columbus instead of giving up a goal with 17 seconds to go and losing in a shootout, even if Kane hadn’t taken his dumb penalty against the Wild last Sunday and the Wings had forced the game to OT to get a point, and even if in the horrible game in Florida the Wings had only given up one goal in the final 90 seconds not two goals …the Wings still would only have 96 points and be out of playoff position at the moment behind Ottawa’s 97 and Boston’s 98.

The Hawks have missed the playoffs the last six years and eight of the last nine and are still next to last in the NHL this year. So they’d already in a 10-year rebuild.

Tigers outscoring Miami 15-2 this series.

McGoniGONE!

Through 5 by Skubal: 0 runs, 0 hits, 62 pitches

I'm very reluctant to re-post Jeff Moss of all people but, this one time, he makes a reasonable point.

The current Central standings are easy to remember.

Apart from Larkin, Kenny had two #15 picks in 25 years! Yzerman has had seven #15 picks already. The year before Holland picked Larkin he picked Mantha at #20 - Mantha was handed to Yzerman in 2019 as a 24 year old coming off a 25G 48Pts in 67 games. Holland also picked Tyler Bertuzzi late in the 2nd round in the same draft as Mantha and Bertuzzi was handed to Yzerman in 2019 as a 24 year old coming off a 21 G 47 Pts season. Hronek, drafted late in the 2nd round in 2016, was handed to Yzerman as a 21 year old. Holland missed on two top 10s - Zadina and Rasmussen - but let's see how much better than those two Kasper and Danielson turn out to be. That's not defending Holland, just saying that apart from his three top 6 overall picks Yzerman's drafting hasn't yielded much ...yet. A 91 point season with 2 games to go, on the playoff bubble, isn't much different than what I expected last September. We'd feel differently about 91 points if: a) the points hadn't been frontended in the first 2/3 of the season followed by a 1/3 of the season collapse; and b) youth like Kasper, Danielson, ASP and Cossa had contributed to those 91 points.