Race for the Playoffs: Chicago’s pursuit runs into old nemesis Detroit tonight

Joe Yerdon

Mar 28, 2011, 10:15 AM EDT

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With the season winding down and the playoff picture sorting itself out, we’ll be taking a look at the night’s games and how they’ll potentially affect the playoff races. This is ProHockeyTalk’s “Race for the Playoffs.”

Western Conference

1. Vancouver – 109 pts
2. Detroit – 97 pts
3. San Jose – 97 pts
4. Phoenix – 93 pts
5. Los Angeles – 92 pts
6. Nashville – 92 pts
7. Anaheim – 89 pts
8. Chicago – 88 pts
9. Calgary – 87 pts
10. Dallas – 86 pts

Chicago @ Detroit – 7:30 p.m. ET

Things are getting a bit dicey for the defending Stanley Cup champions. They’ve lost five of their last eight games and they’ve slipped back in the West race to eighth place and they’re just two points away from being in tenth. If the wins don’t start coming soon, they could find themselves not even getting a chance to defend their title in the playoffs. Tonight, they’ll get to face a Detroit team playing without Jimmy Howard among others. If there was ever a good shot for Chicago to get one over on their hated Original Six rivals, this would be it.

With Anaheim in action at home against lowly Colorado, they’ll need to win to try and keep pace with the Ducks. For Detroit, a win would do them well to keep the streaking Predators off their heels. Nashville is just five points out of the division lead and while they’ve been on a tear, they’ve jumped Chicago for second place and are locked into the middle of the pack in the playoffs. While five points is a good lead, the threat of being overtaken is still there.

Detroit has been coping with different nagging injuries all year and played well and they’ll need to keep that up through the rest of the season. This is the first of three meetings between Chicago and Detroit before the end of the season as they’ll conclude the year with a home-and-home series that concludes with the NBC Game of the Week on the final day of the season from Chicago.

Colorado @ Anaheim – 10 p.m. ET

Anaheim’s hot run of play of late has gotten them into seventh in the West and with a win tonight they can keep the pressure from the likes of Calgary and Dallas off of them and move slightly closer to locking down a playoff spot in the West. Corey Perry has been a man possessed of late seemingly carrying the Ducks on his shoulders. Over his last nine games, Perry has 11 goals and four assists and the Ducks have gone 7-2-0 in those games. Doing all that with a host of different guys in goal between Dan Ellis, Ray Emery, and recently returned from vertigo Jonas Hiller makes the feat all the more impressive. The Ducks top line of Perry, Ryan Getzlaf, and Bobby Ryan might be the best line in the NHL right now while Lubomir Visnovsky is quietly having one of the top seasons from a defenseman.

With all those positive things working, however, all it takes is a couple bumps in the road to knock you back out of the top eight in the West. Beating teams like 14th in the West Colorado is essential to keeping the good things going. If the Ducks allow this game to play like a trap game and lose, it could be looked back on as one of the more regrettable losses of the season. The way the Ducks are rolling right now, expecting a letdown here seems unlikely.

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