{"id":546218,"date":"2026-04-07T21:07:40","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T21:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/546218\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T21:07:40","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T21:07:40","slug":"lightning-remain-the-constant-as-atlantic-division-hierarchy-shifts-with-rise-of-sabres-canadiens-national-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/546218\/","title":{"rendered":"Lightning remain the constant as Atlantic Division hierarchy shifts with rise of Sabres, Canadiens | National Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) \u2014 There\u2019s a neck-and-neck, three-way race for the Atlantic Division title, and the only person seemingly not buying into the buzz might be Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Emerging from the Lightning<\/a> locker room before playing at Buffalo on Monday night, Cooper shook his head in mock dismay upon seeing the larger than usual crowd of reporters awaiting his arrival.<\/p>\n

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Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) \u2014 There\u2019s a neck-and-neck, three-way race for the Atlantic Division title, and the only person…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5103],"tags":[265,5,264,21,5147,1063,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-546218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal-canadiens","8":"tag-canadiens","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-montreal","11":"tag-montreal-canadiens","12":"tag-montrealcanadiens","13":"tag-national_sports","14":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116365472124111884","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546218","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=546218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}