Tragic or magic number depending on your viewpoint for those scoring at home now is as follows:
28 Colorado Avalanche 78 32 44 2 66
29 Tampa Bay Lightning 79 24 37 18 66
30 New York Islanders 78 26 43 9 61
Colorado-Any combination of three points gained by Avs or lost by Isles because Colorado controls first tie-breaker with more wins.
Tampa Bay-Any combination of four points gained by Lightning or lost by Islanders because Isles at this time control first tie-breaker with more wins and the second tie-breaker which would be head to head games.
NYI Fan Central Comments:
For me, I would like to see Tampa and Colorado win some more games now if for any other reason all of our fans can root for the club to have a great last weekend at home.
As we learned in 2002 the ping pong balls can give the top pick to another team which is why Ilya Kovalchuk went to Atlanta and Mike Milbury who was reportedly very upset and would have selected Kovalchuk decided Alexei Yashin was worth more than Steven Weiss or Jason Spezza who were the consensus 2-3 picks at that time.
