Suppose Playoffs Started Today: Western Conference Part 2
The Western Conference is a conference which faces constant changes. Every day brings a new team up or an old team which had secured a playoff spot from the start, down.
In the first part of “Suppose Playoffs Started Today”, Los Angeles was in eighth place, but Calgary fell down as the Kings moved up, now the matchup mentioned before would be Vancouver Canucks going up against Calgary Flames.
Only Colorado Avalanche and Edmonton Oilers can be considered to be truly out of the playoff race, but teams like Anaheim, Minnesota and Nashville, still have chances to advance, only behind 1-4 points of the eighth playoff seed.
Detroit Red Wings Vs. Dallas Stars
Detroit has become the fourth strongest team recently in the NHL with 90 points after remaining number two for over half of the season.
However, that doesn’t really seem to matter when both these teams go up against each other. The four times that they’ve met one another, Dallas has dominated Red Wings with ease, winning three of four times, and twice by a three goal margin.
Detroit was only able to defeat Dallas Stars back in December.
11-time winners of the Stanley cup, Detroit Red Wings might be flying high in the sky, but not higher than Dallas Stars who haven’t showed any mercy to Red Wings or San Jose Sharks.
The only problem they could be facing is Vancouver, since they’ve lost all four times to Canucks this season.
It would be hard to go against them in the starting round of the playoffs.
There are some advantages that Detroit has.
One would be its goals per game average, which is the highest in the league at 3.23 and one of the highest power-play percentages at 21.1.
Wings’ captain, Nicklas Lidstrom, is one of the best defensemen in the NHL, with 69 points but Wings doesn’t have a goalie as good as Stars’ Finnish Kari Lehtonen who has a .914 saves percentage.
Detroit is missing Chris Osgood who’s been out since January with a nagging groin related injury and Jimmy Howard is currently serving as his replacement.
Brenden Morrow, its captain, has become an unstoppable force for Dallas, the only team in the league with an even plus-minus rating, having something to do with almost every goal scored.
He’ll be a real setback for Detroit in each game they face each other.
A major setback they recently faced was Loui Eriksson, who was thrashed in its previous match with San Jose and his status still remains unknown.
This situation would be the best for Dallas, analyzing its season against Red Wings and player situations.
Stars is great offensively and has a great defensive line-up as well, while Detroit lacks the stopping power needed to hold back those wild Texans.
If Detroit remains in this condition entering the playoffs, it would probably take it the whole seven-game series to decide a winner as both teams are tough and nobody likes to be knocked out in the first round.
Experience is another advantage Detroit has when it comes to the playoffs, winning the 2008 cup and reaching the 2009 finals, Red Wings knows how to truly handle the extreme pressure of final matchups.
Dallas, in that sense, hasn’t won the Stanley cup since the 1998-1999 season and since then the team has drastically changed, with a lot of new players in its line-up.
Come playoffs, we could see Dallas improving its position against Detroit Red Wings, and that’s purely on the basis of each team’s past record when facing each other.
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