Colorado is the team to beat across the entire NHL.<\/p>\n
The Central Division leader will win the Presidents’ Trophy and have home ice throughout the Stanley Cup Playoffs. <\/p>\n
The Avalanche’s first playoff opponent may not be determined until the final game of the regular season.<\/p>\n
Nashville and Los Angeles are tied on 81 points. The two sides meet on Monday in southern California. <\/p>\n
Even if Nashville wins, it still has to get through Anaheim twice, Utah, Minnesota and San Jose. All of those teams are still involved in some sort of playoff race. <\/p>\n
The Kings have a cleaner finish with two contests against Vancouver and one versus Calgary, Edmonton and Seattle. <\/p>\n
A Kings victory on Monday might provide some clarity in the wild-card race because of how easy their remaining schedule is after the clash with Nashville. <\/p>\n
San Jose and Winnipeg are hanging on in the wild-card race. Both teams must win on Monday to take advantage of the loss that one of the teams in front of them will suffer. <\/p>\n
Vegas’ win in Edmonton on Saturday tightened up the Pacific Division race.<\/p>\n
The Oilers need to get through a three-game road swing against Utah, San Jose and Los Angeles with at least four points to keep first place in their hands ahead of the final two games against Colorado and Vancouver. <\/p>\n
The Ducks need to split with Nashville and beat at least one of San Jose and Minnesota to be in the race until the final day.<\/p>\n
Vegas should beat Vancouver on Tuesday and has two winnable games against Seattle left. The only real challenges left for the Golden Knights come against Colorado and Winnipeg. <\/p>\n
If the Oilers and Ducks slip up more, the Golden Knights could slide in to win the Pacific.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles (WC2) vs. Colorado (Central 1)<\/p>\n
Utah (WC1) vs. Edmonton (Pacific 1)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colorado is the team to beat across the entire NHL. The Central Division leader will win the Presidents’…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[463,464],"tags":[5,4,60,14,104,718],"class_list":{"0":"post-543776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl-playoffs","8":"category-stanley-cup-playoffs","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-nhl-playoffs","12":"tag-stanley-cup","13":"tag-stanley-cup-playoffs","14":"tag-stanley-cup-playoffs-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116357990467577128","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}