Florida Panthers Still In Fight For Home Ice in Round 1
The Florida Panthers got a little bit of help from the Detroit Red Wings on Friday night as they continue to jockey for playoff positioning.
Even after weathering a five-game losing streak, the Florida Panthers still have a shot at home ice in the first round of the playoffs playoffs.
The Detroit Red Wings defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning, 4-3, in overtime on Friday night to keep the gap between the Bolts and the Panthers at two points heading into the final three games of the season.
Riding a two-game winning streak, Florida will play the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday night before finishing the season with a Monday-Tuesday back-to-back at home against the New York Rangers and on the road in Tampa Bay.
The Lightning finish its season with the same two opponents as Florida. They will take on Buffalo on Sunday night, play the Panthers on Tuesday, then finish their season on Thursday night in New York in what will likely be Sam Rosen’s final game in his 40-year career as the play-by-play voice of the Rangers.
Tampa Bay owns the tiebreaker between the two teams with a healthy 39-37 lead in regulation wins, so the Panthers would need to beat the Lightning and then earn at least one more point than the Tampa does in the games against New York and Buffalo.
The Sabres saw their five-game winning streak come to an end on Thursday, but they are well out of the playoff picture at this point. They sit at 35-37-6 (76 points) and will officially miss the postseason 14th year in a row.
New York (37-35-7; 81 points) has an outside shot at the playoffs, sitting six points behind the Montreal Canadiens for the final wild card spot with four games to go, but it would take a lot of help to get there. Sitting at a pedestrian 4-5-1 in their last 10 games, the Rangers will likely be playing for pride by the time they take on the two Florida teams.
That is the slate these two teams are dealing with to finish the season.
Either way, it seems likely that they will be playing each other in the playoffs at this point.
The Panthers are four points ahead of the Ottawa Senators for the third seed in the Atlantic Division and could lock up a Top 3 seed in the division with a regulation win on Saturday night.
Tampa Bay still has an outside shot at finishing first in the division. It sits two points behind the Toronto Maple Leafs for second in the division, with each team having 39 regulation wins.
The Maple Leafs have four games left on their schedule to Tampa Bay’s three, so in order for the Lightning to jump them, the Leafs would have to lose two more games than Tampa to finish the season.