Playoff Push

[BigRig4]

How will resting our players work for us given our cap situation? Can we call up more players from Belleville? Assuming we can't, with a fully healthy roster we are currently carrying the following extra players: Hamonic, Gilbert and Crookshank.

So if we want, we could sit Jensen for Hamonic. We are currently "resting" Brady by playing Crookshank, so if/when Brady comes back we could rest another forward instead. I'm thinking the following forwards seem to need a rest: Stutzle (can't shoot), Pinto (had an injury pre-4 Nations and seem to be a bit slow right now), Cozens (some people here said that as the adrenaline of the trade settled he has slowed down maybe due to being out of shape).

If we want to rest two forwards and one defenseman, we could go 11/7 and play all of Hamonic, Gilbert and Crookshank. I don't know how we could rest more than that, unless we rotate between the players we give a rest to, or we simply reduce and re-distribute ice time.

As for our goalies, I imagine we just keep alternating Ullmark and Forsberg now. If we want to give Ullmark more rest than that, we just play Forsberg more. It would be nice to give Merilainen a couple more starts, but I imagine for that we may need to send Crookshank down?

In theory, we could possibly paper a few guys who don’t need waivers down to Belleville for a few days. Not sure if that ever actually happens in practice though.

 

[DrEasy]

In theory, we could possibly paper a few guys who don’t need waivers down to Belleville for a few days. Not sure if that ever actually happens in practice though.

Good point; who would that be, maybe Kleven? Matinpalo? Highmore? Gaudette? Greig?

 

[Stylizer1]

And even if you take Sens-Devils (right now) and Blues-Oilers (very possible) out of the Wildcard vs. weaker division spots out of the equation, not all divisional qualifiers are created equal.

As I said Dallas is pretty obviously the 2nd best team in the West and the points bear that out. And they will be facing the team with the 4th most points.

Based on pure points earned the West bracket will likely start with:

1-8
2-4
3-7
5-6

That is pretty dodgy, IMO.

its dumb.

 

[frightenedinmatenum2]

for the east moneypuck has
montreal at 84.2%
NYR at 8.4%
wings at 4.6%
isles at 2.6%

and cbj is basically done

so that last spot is really down to two teams (montreal and rangers) especially since the wings have a hard schedule to end the season

Wings have a head to head against Montreal and a game in hand against Florida who are jobbing to everybody right now. If they win both of those in regulation, they only need two points more than Montreal with 3 games remaining since Detroit would likely have the RW.

It's probably not going to happen but if they beat MTL, it's at least interesting.

 

[Senscore]

Looking back, the four nations break may have saved our season