Does anyone want to win the National Hockey League’s Southeast division? Four teams are separated by five points for first place while the fifth and last place team is only seven points back entering Wednesday night.
The Florida Panthers and Winnipeg Jets are the co-leaders with 65 points, The Washington Capitals, four-time defending champions, are in third, two points back at 63 . The Tampa Bay Lightning are in fourth, five markers behind at 60. The Carolina Hurricanes are in last place in the division and Eastern Conference but only trail by eight markers at 58. Amongst this group, you have two former Stanley Cup Champions (Tampa Bay in '04 and Carolina in '06) and another team that had the best regular season record two years ago.
So, what is the problem? They are inconsistent. Tampa Bay was one win away from the Stanley Cup Final championship series last year. Today, they're one game above .500 at 27-26-6. The Lighning have given up 31 more goals to opposition, 197, than they have scored, 166. Washington has lost two straight and four of five overall.
On Monday, the Capitals were shutout 5-0 by Carolina. The Hurricanes out shot Washington 40-17. The Caps' best player was called out last week by ex-teammate Olaf Kolzig and a few days later got into a fight during practice with current teammate Dennis Wideman. Earlier this season, the Capitals fired their head coach Bruce Boudreau and replaced with Dale Hunter. The change hasn't made a difference.
As far as the division leaders, the Winnipeg Jets and Florida Panthers are both doing surprisingly well. Last summer, the Jets franchise moved from Atlanta, Georgia up north to Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada. They are feast and famine when it comes to offense. They scored 9 goals in win over Philadelphia in October yet have been held scoreless for the entire game seven times this season. The Jets have played great at home for a city which lost a NHL team in 1996. Winnipeg has a 18-9-3 record on home ice but has a 11-17-4 record away from Manitoba.
Florida, located in Sunrise near Miami (Don't ask why, I have no clue) can thank the NHL's clueless overtime rules for having a share of the division lead. From 1983-84, to 1998-99, if nobody scored in the 5-minute period, the game was a tie and one point was given to the home and visiting squads. If a team scored a goal in sudden-death, they got two points for a win and the other team received nothing. In 1999-2000, the NHL decided to go to a 4-on-4 format instead of the regular 5-on-5 for regular season overtime periods only.
In exchange for this radical idea, each team was awarded a point if the game went into overtime no matter if they won or lost. That's right, the NHL decided to give a point to the losing team in overtime. And they wonder why nobody watches hockey. Thanks to the 2000 rule changes and the penalty shot shootout in 2005-06, the Panthers have 11 points from overtime/shootout losses. Winnipeg and Washington have two more wins than Florida but only 4 and 6 overtime loss points. Tampa Bay has 27 wins, the same as Florida, and 6 OTL points. The difference of 5 points from overtime losses is why Florida leads Tampa Bay by 5 in the standings.
Last but not least, well maybe in this division, are the Carolina Hurricanes. Carolina has 57 points, 11 from games lost in overtime. No sport rewards trying but failing more than the National Hockey League. These are grown men not children. Anyway, the Hurricanes have won six of their last 10 games which is the best record over the past few weeks. They even have a .500 record at home if OT losses are not counted toward the standings. Carolina has 16 wins, 12 regulation losses, and 3 overtime losses. In the NBA, The Hurricanes would have a 16-15 home record meaning one game above the .500 mark. However, they have 7 wins, 14 regulation losses, and 8 overtime losses away from Carolina.
It's a division that some team has to win at the end of the season. The southeast champion gets the third seed in the playoffs. We are not sure if the National Hockey League will give out special runner-up awards to the losers. Okay, that was harsh. The other four teams could still get a playoff birth if they are one of the top eight teams in the Eastern Conference. Instead of "beast of the east" or "beauty and the beast", it is "best of the worst" in the Southeast division.
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