Welcome to the Sprint

Well the Olympics wrapped up in exciting style on Sunday with Canada eeking out an overtime win over the USA on a goal by cindy crosby. That was like a punch to the stomach. Despite that blow, the game was still one of the best hockey games played in a long time. The NHL schedule started back up last night and teams have 34 days in which they will play 19-22 games. So if you like hockey, you're going to get to see a lot of it this month.

The Flyers start off with Tampa Bay tonight, so I'm expecting 2 goals from Blair Betts as that's been his trend this year. Then they play in Florida tomorrow. The Flyers have 22 games left, they're sitting at sixth place in the conference with 67 points. They have games in hand over every team chasing them except for Boston and Atlanta. My guess is that if they go about .500 in their last 22 games, they will make the playoffs as a lower half seed. If the Flyers stay on fire and win say 15+ games, they have an outside shot at winning the division. They're 10 points behind the Devils and 9 behind Pittsburgh though they have a game and two games in hand over each team respectively. The one thing the Flyers cannot afford to do is go on a prolonged losing streak. They only have a four point lead over Tampa Bay (and a game in hand) who they play tonight. Their next three games are all against teams who are in the hunt for a playoff spot, so picking up wins against each of them would go a long way to shoring up their playoff spot.

The Flyers schedule couldn't be much easier for these last few weeks of the season either. They play 16 or 17 teams that have fewer points than they do. So if they miss the playoffs, something seriously wrong happened. So here's to a good stretch run for the Flyers!