Morning Skate: Set

18/04/2024 13:00

Game 1, at least.

Welcome to Thursday, folks — and the NHL regular season just about over.

There were and handful of games last night and there will be six more tonight, with all six involving Western Conference teams.

Let them all have their weird time zone fun.

We learned yesterday that Bruins-Leafs Game 1 will, in fact, be Saturday night at 8 PM, as we speculated the other night.

Looking at the Western Conference briefly, it looks like the entire playoff picture (seeding included) is set, so I'm not sure why the league hasn't released a full playoff schedule yet.

Maybe that will come after tonight's games end.

In last night's action, the Maple Leafs iced a pretty standard NHL lineup against Tampa to help Auston Matthews get his 70th goal.

He didn't score, despite throwing 12 (yes, 12) shots on goal and playing more than 21 minutes.

Nikita Kucherov did earn his 100th assist of the season though, bolstering his Hart campaign.

The Coyotes won their Arizona finale too, beating the Oilers, 5-2, while the Dallas Stars clinched the West's top seed.

Bracket challenge

If you want to get in on the NHL's Bracket Challenge fun, I created a league for us SCOC folks.

View the league >>

The password is Chowder2024. Why is there a private league when I'm just posting the password for all to see? Good question. We may never know.

Bracket selections will open tomorrow morning.

One word of warning: if you have an ad blocker on your computer, you may not be able to view the web page for the Challenge — it seems like some tools register the entire site as an ad.

Happy picking!

Anyways, what's on tap for today?