Penguins and Mammoth Clinch
The Pittsburgh Penguins and the Utah Mammoth have clinched playoff berths as the NHL season moves into pure scoreboard mode with very few games left. (usatoday.com) ESPN noted the urgency around the rest of the table — as of this week every NHL team had four or fewer games remaining, which magnifies each result for bubble teams. (espn.com).
With three or four games left for almost everybody, the National Hockey League playoff race has turned into a nightly math problem, and two teams just solved theirs. The Pittsburgh Penguins are in after beating the New Jersey Devils on April 9, and the Utah Mammoth are in after beating the Nashville Predators and then getting help from the Anaheim Ducks later that night. (nhl.com) (espn.com) Pittsburgh ended a three-season playoff drought with a 5-2 win in Newark, and Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang all had points in the clincher. The Penguins had 96 points through 78 games in the official standings update late April 9, which locked them into an Eastern Conference spot. (nhl.com 1) (nhl.com 2) Utah’s path was more like needing your own flight to land and then waiting for one more gate to close. The Mammoth beat Nashville 4-1 to reach 90 points, and Anaheim’s 6-1 win over San Jose soon after removed one of the last teams that could still catch them. (espn.com) (nhl.com) The Mammoth story is newer than the Penguins story. Utah is in only its second season after the Arizona franchise moved, and this is the first playoff berth under the Mammoth name. (nhl.com) (deseret.com) The standings show why every result now feels oversized. In the East, Ottawa held the second wild card at 92 points, while Columbus had 90 and Detroit, the New York Islanders, and Washington were all sitting on 89 as of the late-night April 9 update. (nhl.com) The West is just as compressed, only lower on the table. Utah led the wild-card pack with 90 points, Nashville had 84, Los Angeles had 83, San Jose had 81, and Winnipeg had 80, which means one win or one overtime loss can still reshuffle the last bracket line. (nhl.com) The National Hockey League does not break ties with “who beat whom most recently.” It starts with regulation wins, then moves to regulation-and-overtime wins, which is why teams and fans are tracking not just points but exactly how those points were earned. (usatoday.com) That is why ESPN described the league as being in scoreboard mode this week. When every team has four or fewer games left, a team can finish dinner in a playoff spot and wake up outside the bracket because another game ended in regulation instead of overtime. (espn.com) (nhl.com) Pittsburgh and Utah are done with that part now, but even they are not done playing for position. The Penguins were second in the Metropolitan Division on April 9, while Utah was the first Western wild card, and both slots still shape who they open against when the Stanley Cup Playoffs begin on April 18. (nhl.com 1) (nhl.com 2)
