Sabres hold division lead

Buffalo is sitting on 106 points with two games left, and Montreal is on 104 with three games left, so the Atlantic Division lead is real but still small enough to flip in one bad night. The National Hockey League’s own playoff update on April 11 said the Canadiens were two points back after winning 10 of their last 11 games. (espn.com) (nhl.com) That race changed shape fast because Buffalo beat Columbus 5-0 on April 9, which pushed the Sabres back into first place before Montreal’s surge fully closed the gap. Hockey-Reference lists that shutout as Buffalo’s most recent result and shows the Sabres at 49 wins, 23 losses, and 8 overtime losses through 80 games. (hockey-reference.com) The standings are tight because Tampa Bay is still right there too at 102 points through 79 games, which means Buffalo is not just protecting first from one team. A division that looked crowded a few days ago has turned into a three-team squeeze with Buffalo first, Montreal second, and Tampa Bay third. (espn.com) (cbssports.com) In the National Hockey League format, the top three teams in each division make the playoffs automatically, and the division winner gets the cleaner path: a first-round series against the lower wild-card team instead of opening against another top-three divisional rival. The league’s April 8 playoff explainer laid out that structure while the Atlantic race was still bouncing around nightly. (nhl.com) That is why a two-point edge this late matters more than it sounds. With fewer than a week left in the regular season and every Atlantic contender down to four or fewer games, there is almost no time left to recover from a regulation loss. (nhl.com) (sports.yahoo.com) Montreal is the pressure point in this story because the Canadiens are not drifting into second place by accident. National Hockey League reporting on April 11 had them at 47-22-10 and 10-1-0 over their previous 11 games, which is the kind of finish that turns a standings gap into a nightly scoreboard watch. (nhl.com) Buffalo, though, has built a cushion in the category the league uses to break ties: regulation wins. ESPN’s standings page shows the Sabres with 41 regulation wins, compared with Montreal’s 33, so if the teams finish level on points, Buffalo is in the stronger position. (espn.com) (usatoday.com) The remaining calendar is short enough that every game now feels like moving one square on a nearly finished board. Hockey-Reference shows Buffalo’s next game on Monday, April 13, and the National Hockey League said on April 11 that the Sabres had two games left while Montreal had three, which gives the Canadiens one extra chance to make up ground but also gives Buffalo control if it keeps winning. (hockey-reference.com) (nhl.com) So the headline is not that Buffalo has run away with the Atlantic Division. It is that the Sabres reached the final week in first place, with the tie-break edge, while Montreal is charging and Tampa Bay is still close enough to punish any slip. (espn.com) (nhl.com)