Nobody has said we’re a lock. People were perhaps getting a little too optimistic and carried away and I think you provide a good perspective to keep it in check, but people also don’t want to hear it (especially in that tone) right after we lose to the biggest thorn in our side.
Additionally (and this is the bigger point of contention from my end, since this is actually content-based, as opposed to the point in my first paragraph which is more about posting style/timing) is your insistence we need to do something crazy to make the playoffs, like a 7- or 8-game winning streak or 10-game point streak to make it. Honestly, we’re more likely to win the Stanley Cup than we are to miss the playoffs if we have “only” a 5- or 6-game winning streak: that’s how unrealistic you are to that side (obviously if the longest winning streak we have the rest of the year is 2 games, that doesn’t bode well, either).
All we need is only ONE of CAR/PIT to get X-1 points in 19 games (one fewer game than us) or MTL to get X-2 in 18 games (two fewer games than us).
Something like (and I haven’t looked at the schedule to know if the team we play 11 games from now is really good or not, this exercise isn’t a prediction): W W W L W OTL W L L W L W W W L L W L W W
^The above includes no winning streak more than three games. The hottest we get is a stretch of getting points in 6 out of 7. There are
multiple multi-game regulation losing streaks/2-points-in-4-games stretches. Yet the above would give us 25 points (98 total). In order to miss, ALL (not just one or two, all three) of these would have to happen: CAR and PIT finish with 25 points in 19 games and MTL finishes with 24 points in 18 games.
Even if you change the last L of the year to a W and the L in the 11th game to a W, we’d have played a lot of good hockey, but still have no winning streak longer than 5 games and still have multiple times we lost back-to-back games in regulation. We’d finish with 29 points (102 total). CAR and PIT would have to finish with 29 in 19 and MTL would have to finish with 28 in 18 (and Washington would have to finish with 24 in 18, the NYI with 24 in 20).
I will never post on this site ever again if WC2 (no matter who it is, and even if we go on a 13-game winning streak and end up winning the division) ends up with 103+ points.
Philly needs a 7-game winning streak. Buffalo needs a 7-game winning streak. We (nor Pitt/CAR/MTL) do not.
ETA: Also, I’m not saying this team won’t go on a 7-game winning streak. They certainly have the capability. I’m saying they don’t need to. A 7-game winning streak would put us in home-ice-in-the-first-round conversation.