Morning Skate: Standings

It is Wednesday, my dudes.

After a rousing, ping pong-filled day yesterday, the Bruins will be back on the ice for practice at 11 AM.

The team returns to game action tomorrow night, with a second match-up with the Edmonton Oilers in as many weeks.

There was a good deal of match-up related conversation in yesterday’s Morning Skate, which had me look at the Eastern Conference standings in more detail (the numbers below are from Tuesday evening, prior to last night’s action).

We really haven’t had to do much standings watching around here in quite a while, as the Bruins have been comfortably first in the Atlantic and the Eastern Conference for about three months.

When I looked, I was surprised to see just how much volatility there is in the Eastern Conference playoff picture.

The Bruins are locked into first in the Atlantic and pretty much locked into the #1 overall seed.

Tampa and Toronto are locked into a first-round match-up, but home ice is still to be determined.

Barring a late run up (or collapse), the Rangers are locked into the third spot in the Metropolitan Division.

Other than those, it’s pretty open. Carolina and New Jersey are duking it out for first in the Metropolitan.

The wild card picture is even more chaotic, with four teams (Buffalo, Ottawa, Florida, Washington) within three points of Pittsburgh for the second wild card spot and within four of the Islanders for the first wild card spot.

I guess the take-home point here is it’s probably a little too soon to start projecting first-round opponents for the Bruins, as there are six (seven if you want to be kind to Detroit) teams they could realistically play.

Should be fun to watch!

Today’s discussion topic

Some of you discussed the power play yesterday — does that count as your biggest concern heading into the playoffs, or is there something else?

(For discussion’s sake, leave “stay healthy” out if it.)