The lay of the land

I should really start blogging on weekends, too. This is too much to take.

Last night, nothing important happened. I mean, the Thrashers won their sixth straight, beating the I-told-you-these-guys-were-in-total-freefall Capitals by the are-you-sure-you're-reading-that-right score of 5-1, which led to me having a dream in which the Thrashers won so many in a row that we had to start including them in talks about the bubble, and they became another team that could knock the Rangers out of the playoffs......

but, the point is: nothing that actually matters to the Rangers' playoff chances happened.

I'm easing myself into the myriad topics I actually want to talk about here, very few of which I will actually end up covering by the end of the day, due to my having a job that isn't to write this terrible thing, so let's start with a quick bubble-standings update, after the weekend's games.

Saturday, we and the Canadiens lost in regulation, and the Pens, Sabres, Panthers, and 'Canes all lost in shootouts. Sunday, we and the Pens won, and the other 4 were inactive. Yesterday, as I mentioned, we were all resting. Incidentally, does the NHL hate Mondays? Is this a trend? 2-game Mondays, 12-game Tuesdays? Whatever. The point is: The Canadiens picked up nothing in 1 game, the Sabres, Panthers, and 'Canes each picked up 1 in 1 game, we picked up 2 in 2 games, and the Pens infuriatingly picked up 3 in 2 games. Here's where that leaves us, as of this afternoon:

5. Pittsburgh, 82 pts, 11 GR
6. Montréal, 80 pts, 13 GR
7. NEW YORK RANGERS, 80 pts, 12 GR
8. Carolina, 79 pts, 11 GR
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9. Florida, 78 pts, 13 GR
10. Buffalo, 76 pts, 13 GR

I'll get into tonight's games a little later, but there are two thoughts about these standings that I want to leave you with first:

1) I am still not putting the Flyers on the chart yet, because we have enough problems without worrying about home ice, and they're still pretty out-of-reach, when you consider games-in-hand: they are sitting on 84 points, with 14 games remaining. But, as some kind of saying probably goes, you need to actually get points out of those games-in-hand for them to matter. With the Flyers in Detroit tonight, the standings really could keep shifting in such a way that they'll need to be included in this. And Torts does keep telling us to look up, not down. Not yet, though - one thing at a time.

2) This is all bullshit. I feel like I've been posting these standings for long enough now that I need to throw out that disclaimer. There are different reasons you could be looking at these standings, and I feel obligated to steer you from the wrong ones. The actual summary of the standings is: There are 10-15 games left in the season, and 5th through 10th are all within a few points of each other. That's what matters. If you're worrying about which side of that dashed line we fall on on a given day in this stretch, you're doing it wrong.

I post these for two reasons. One is to give you an overall picture of where we're standing, why each game is so important, and which other teams' games are also important. The other is because I'm a crazy fucking geek, and putting together numbers like this appeals to me on a very raw level. So, the point is: read these standings for those reasons. If you find yourself thinking anything like "oh crap, yesterday we were in 8th and then we didn't play last night and now we're in 9th," chill. This has been your "how you are supposed to think" lesson for the day. Thanks for tuning in.