Agreed, but we still have to worry about Montreal, who are in yet on another tear.
I honestly don't think Montreal are much to be afraid of, bur I wish we were much more in the clear. If Columbus passes us, it's still possible we fall out if the two wild card spots are both Atlantic teams.
But again, I can't take Montreal all that seriously, as all those teams are on PDO benders. There's not even a team out of a spot right now, at least not in the East who are victims of bad goaltending or something and should be in. I mean, I guess the Flyers and Pens are victims of that, but should the Flyers really be a playoff team looking at their roster? Hell no. The Pens? Not really. They missed the playoffs (but just barely) with decent goaltending the last two years.
There's enough evidence to believe all of Columbus, Montreal, Detroit, etc have overachieved. Or at the very least Detroit may have underachieved with Lalonde (I think they were 5 games below NHL 500 when he was fired) and then the market correction happened with McLellan. They're still on pace to finish with fewer points than they did last year with Lalonde as the head coach the entire season.
All these East bubble teams have bloated shooting percentages and weak to utterly abhorrent possession numbers.
