Eastern Conference Race

JP has a super-sweet (and time-wasting) application. Bascially you get to play the prognosticator and forecast the remaining games that an Eastern Conference team plays in. Then it compiles the points into the standings and let’s you know who makes the playoffs, who doesn’t and seedings. As you can tell, it is pretty in-depth.

Here’s our official TST forecast for how things will look when the dust clears in early April, with final points in parenthesis:

1. Montreal (103)
2. New Jersey (101)
3. Carolina (92)
4. Pittsburgh (100)
5. Ottawa (98)
6. New York Rangers (97)
7. Boston (96)
8. Philadelphia (95)
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9. Buffalo (89)
10. Washington (88)
11. Florida (85)
12. Toronto (83)
13. NYI (78)
14. Atlanta (77)
15. Tampa Bay (76)


Initial thoughts:
``Wow looks a lot like the standings do today, in terms of space between teams and where they're actually positioned.
``It would suck to lose to Jersey by a point. But the matchup against a likely #7 team like Boston or Philly is not much better than a first round matchup against a likely #5 seed like Ottawa or NYR. The first round will be stiff no matter what. In the longterm though, home ice would be nice for as long as possible.
``We had Washington losing a head-to-head game against Carolina. If they win that one game and the other chips fall as they did in our guss, they could sneak into the 3 seed on a tiebreaker.

We'll check back in on this bold prediction sure to go wrong when the season is over.