A Tight Race to the Playoffs

I decided to check on the standings tonight and boy was I surprised at how tight the race to the playoffs is.  The first place team in the Eastern Conference has 86 points while the eighth place team has 78.  That is only an eight point difference and when the average amount of games left is twelve, anything can happen.  We could see a swap at the end of those twelve games with the current first place team being in eighth and the current eighth place team being in first.  This tight race is also prevalent in the Western Conference with the exception of the team from Detroit who is way beyond everyone else.  Besides them though, you have another tight race.  I remember last year I was starting to put money down on the playoffs and it looks like this year I will probably have to wait until the playoffs start since there are really no guaranteed teams as of now.

Where Should the Next Outdoor Game Be?

There are nine cities currently vying for next years outdoor game.  Those cities include Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Detroit, Denver, New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia.  All are great cities with large fan bases for their NHL teams but in my opinion it should be New York.  Of course this could be some hometown/favorite team bias but it also makes a lot of sense in a historical perspective.  The venue that would host the game would be the current Yankees Stadium.  The game would be the last sporting event in the Stadiums history.  Now I can see that this will not settle well with strictly Yankees fans, who feel that the last sporting event should be a Yankees game but come on who wouldn’t want to see this game.  Even better make the game the New York Rangers versus the Boston Bruins and build the hype on the whole New York, Boston rivalry in one of the homes of that rivalry being Yankees Stadium.  I don’t know how to explain this more, its pretty self-explanatory.  Plus having it in a baseball stadium would mean that the league wouldn’t have to deal with the possibility that the NFL needs the stadium or the occupying team doesn’t want their field ruined.  So Gary B. if your reading this (I doubt that you are) place next years outdoor game in New York City, the Big Apple.