NBC mentioned it at our game in Minnesota, that the Stars won't make the POs. They are bad on the road an 9 of their last 12 are on the road. Without Bishop, they are very likely falling apart. I still don't think 94 points will get you in for sure.
I dont think it's for sure, but I think it would be very close. I cant see Dallas(Would need to go 5-3-1 to reach 95 points) or Calgary(Needs to go 7-1-1 for 95) hitting those records and we have the tiebreaker over both teams at 94 points.
So of the teams outside looking in that leaves only St. Louis who I think has a legit chance at hitting 94. They'd need to go 5-4-1 for 94 and 5-3-2 or 6-4-0 for 95. They're 5-4-1 in the last 10 so doing that again would get them to the 94 point threshold, they're schedule doesn't look to be all that tough at first but when you dive into it further it shows some tricks. They have 5 Home games and 5 Road games left. Of the 5 home games, Boston, San Jose, and Washington come to town for 3 of those games so they're 3 difficult home games to win. They do have whats basically a freebie in Vancouver in one of those games, and then a wild card in Chicago for the 5th home game. Chicago should be toast and in terms of the playoffs they are, but you also have to look at the rivalry between the Blues and Hawks and no the Hawks players will get that extra little bit motivated to try and spoil the Blues from the playoffs if they can do anything about it.
Then the Blues have 5 road games which includes a trip to CBJ with CBJ being one of the best teams in the league right now and especially at home being very good and that's a tough matchup. After that they have a B2B road swing in Vegas one night followed by Arizona the next. Vegas is one of the best home teams in the league as well, and Arizona is playing good hockey down the stretch and playing spoiler to a few teams already. Toss in the fact it's a B2B and it becomes more challenging as well.
After that, they finish the season with yet another B2B road trip first in Chicago, and then here in Denver.
At first the schedule doesn't look necessarily scary, but if you dive into it a bit more it becomes much more of a daunting task to go 5-4-1 in the last 10 games.
The fact that last game of the season is on the road against us as well is especially huge. It's a 4 point swing either way that could make all the difference in the world. It likely means they need to be within a point of us at least going into that game for it to matter. And if it does matter, it's the 2nd night of a B2B on the road in our barn for the last game of the year as well.
So yeah, I think the Blues have a shot at hitting 95 or 96 points, but it's not going to be easy for them. Especially with Hutton still out and Allen not exactly showing to be in his best form right now or all year for that matter.
That's also not taking into account LA or Anaheim either, who both have some work left to do to hit 94 as well.
LA needs 10 points in 10 games to hit 94 and they've got a B2B road stretch against Minnesota and Winnipeg to look forward to tonight and tomorrow. If they lost both games(Certainly possible), all of a sudden they have to go 5-3-0 down the stretch just to crack that 94 marker as well. Toss in 2 games against us... They could be very hard up to hit 94 points even if we split the series against them down the stretch.
Cool for Matty to surprise her like that though. Who is Boomer Esiason? Is he like the Robert de Niro of in-laws?
