As infuriating as it was to see Anaheim rally to tie Dallas and win in OT, giving the Star’s the unwelcome Bettman point in the process — overall it was a pretty good night for the idle Kings.
- First of all, Dallas gets one point when they needed two. Someone is going to miss the playoffs by a point or a tie-breaker, and it might well be them.
- Second, Calgary is within 5 minutes of losing to San Jose. I know people are hoping for the Kings to overtake the Sharks and win the division, but I’ve got two things to say about that: (1) I don’t want home ice advantage. The Kings are better on the road; (2) we haven’t nailed down a spot yet; let’s take care of that first.
- The silver lining of San Jose dueling it out with Detroit for 2nd seed (Detroit lost tonight) is that it might give Detroit reason to show up in these last few games. Which would be good, because they play Chicago three times, and Chicago needs to lose.
- Okay, Chicago beat Florida 4-0, which sucks and sucks again. They get a win and a goal-differential boost. Wait, I forgot: I don’t care about their GD, because we lost the season series against them. Never mind.
- It would be nice if Calgary would score two (but not three) in the last 2 minutes of this game. Otherwise, the Sharks’ GD is going to leapfrog the Kings’. There is always a chance Phoenix will be the one to win the division, in which case, the tie-breaker with San Jose will become important.
- 0:22 left. I’m calling it for San Jose. If the Flames go undefeated the rest of the way, they can still get to 97 points. Otherwise, they’re done.
- Which means, it’s pretty close to certain we’re down to six teams for five spots. Excluding VAN, DET and SJS (for the sake of argument), it’s LAK, PHX, CHI, DAL, ANA and NAS. And one of those teams is going to be left out on 4/11.