“Spring Forward, Fall Back.” The handy mnemonic that we use to remember which way to turn the clocks when this irritating Daylight Savings Time scheme starts and stops. Here in most of North America it begins early tomorrow morning and this is the one where we “lose” an hour’s sleep. It’s always fun to see who shows up for work late because there is always somebody who forgets.
I’m always envious of those wise folks in Arizona and Hawai’i who never bought into the idea that it’s great to have it still sunny and 85 degrees at 9:00 pm. Up until just a few years ago, half of Indiana – the half in the Eastern time zone – stayed on Standard time, but they caved.
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The National Hockey League regular season is coming around the 4th turn (if you’ll excuse the metaphor) and for some teams these are intense times as they try to solidify their standings to remain in the playoffs, or for some move up enough to make the playoffs. Only the top eight teams in each Conference will move into the extended season. As you can see in the Eastern Conf. there are still six teams jockeying for the final three slots. But in reality it’s pretty bleak for Atlanta, having lost their last five games. That’s a potential ten points that they could sure use now. I don’t think they have a practical chance of making it. The real scrap will be between Boston and the NY Rangers for the final playoff slot. There are approx. 15 games remaining for each team’s season.
In the Western Conf. there are only three teams battling for the 7th and 8th slots, but there is some good competition farther up the ladder as the better teams are competing for home-ice advantage in the playoff rounds. The top four teams will have home advantage over #’s 5 to 8 through the playoffs and you can see that there’s 5-way race for the #4 position.
Standings charts from NHL.com
Now take a look at both conferences and you will see that Washington is #1 in the East and Chicago is #2 in the West. If both teams are successful through the first three playoff rounds, they would meet in the Stanley Cup finals. They will be playing each other tomorrow on a nationally-televised game that will certainly be entertaining. This is their only regular season contest, so they will be testing each other. The game starts at 11:30 am Central (daylight) time and will be shown on the NBC network. That’s a shame because NBC does the world’s worst job of televising hockey games (and auto races), but you take what you can get.
Both teams are very good and it will be a competitive matchup worth watching. I’m predicting that Chicago wins this one because they are playing very good right now and Washington has been a bit sloppy since the Olympic break was over.
Now our sports break is over and we need to get this equipment checked out. I’ll get the coffee started, then we’ll meet later in the day room.
Also on FireGeezer…
- Morning Lineup – April 1 – April 1, 2012
- Morning Lineup – April 13 – April 13, 2011
- Morning Lineup – March 13 – March 13, 2011
- Morning Lineup – April 24 – April 24, 2012
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