Daily Update March 30

Back in the winning! Mostly by betting on Dallas and against Toronto. I had the misfortune to watch the end of the Boston Washington game, which was the manhandling anybody could have expected. The announcers were whipping themselves into hysterics at every chance in a kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy about how Washington were poised to win, as they were scored on repeatedly, took many penalties, and generally were bad. I've never seen a game be less in spirit like what the announcers were saying.
Even odds for Chicago against anybody outside of LAK/SJS is pretty close to free money, and Boston is a lot better than Philadelphia, just like the Rangers are a lot better than the Oilers. Calgary are good value at 0.44; nothing out of the ordinary today at all.

Playoff Chances

Still six spots here. Wings and Bluejackets the overwhelming favourites now for the wildcard spots, solidified a little with wins. Sens have moved past the Leafs in the "hunt", and may well be putting together a nice drive to 9th. The jackets loss/win in the two previous days gives you a rough idea of how much each game is worth now -- about 10% in the odds. Both Colorado and Chicago clinched last night, so this is down to three spots. Losing to Minnesota while Dallas won is pretty much the nightmare scenario for Phoenix, and you see it in black and white.

Points after elimination

Team	Points	Games
Buffalo	3	6
Edmonton	2	2
Florida	0	1
Calgary	0	0

Buffalo retake the lead with a loser point! This "race" is not for the fleet-of-foot. The Flames are, in fact, eliminated -- in the best case scenario, they win out with 8 ROWs, and Dallas beats Phoenix on closing night *in a shootout*, and both Dallas and Phoenix lose all of their remaining games in regulation. That would create a three-way tie on 85 points for the final spot, Calgary and Dallas will both have 33 ROWs to Phoenix's 30; then you'd look at the head-to-head record between Calgary and Dallas which is two wins for Dallas and one for Calgary; the first Dallas win doesn't count because they had two home games and Calgary doesn't, so the first Dallas home game is thrown out, that leaves a regulation win for Dallas and shootout win for Calgary, so Dallas takes the tie. Whew.