Well, we've won our last couple of games but the chances of our making the playoffs is still looking kind of bleak. With how everyone is clumped together in the West, it's possible, though not likely for us to make a run at it. I'll try and break down exactly what has to happen in order for that to occur. First. I'm going to use Mirtle's standard of 90 points to make the Playoffs. It may be a point or 2 more or less at the end with how much canibalism will happen with the teams so close together, but it's a reasonable estimate. As of today we need to go 15-6-1 to get 90 points. So how are we going to accomplish that? Basically out of any 4 games we need to win 3 of them.
Here are the teams we have left on the Schedule
1 Game against - @Bos, @Det, @NYI, @NJ, @Buf, Van, Edm, Dal, @Col
2 Games Against - Nash 1home/1away, LAK 1home/1away
3 Games Against - STL 2home/1away, SJ 1home/2away, Ana 2home/1away
Now, I realize that in those games we'll probably lose 1 or 2 to a team we shouldn't. Likewise we're more than capable of playing up to the level of some of the top teams. The hardest part of all of this is the 5 game east coast swing that has us playing Boston, Detroit, New Jersey and a surging Buffalo team. If we don't at least split those four AND pick up the Islanders it's going to be even harder for us. That's assuming that we're able to scrape out wins in the two St Louis games and the Nashville game that we have before the long roadtrip. SO what's the plan then? How do we make this math work? Well we have to pick up the vast majority of our in conference games. we play the teams in the scramble for the 5-8 spots 14 times out of the remaining 22 games. That's an awful lot of 4 point games to have. Basically if we're able to play the next 8 games and go 6-2 our chances go up dramatically. That would leave us needing to go 9-4-1 which is fairly manageable seeing as while there would be a few San Jose games in there there would also be a lot of Ducks and Kings games. Is it going to happen? Probably not, but If we have any hope at all it'll be decided in the next 2 weeks...