Tracking Ottawa

Here's how the Northeast Division looks right this second:

NORTHEAST	GP	W	L	OTL	PTS	ROW	SOW	SOL	HOME	ROAD	GF	GA	DIFF	L10	STRK
Boston	69	40	26	3	83	33	7	2	20-13-2	20-13-1	223	170	+53	4-6-0	Lost 3
Ottawa	70	36	25	9	81	31	5	3	18-13-4	18-12-5	216	206	+10	6-3-1	Lost 1
Buffalo	70	33	29	8	74	26	7	4	18-11-7	15-18-1	174	196	-22	7-2-1	Won 2

Ottawa's trying to close the gap on first place and they're beginning to heat up. In their last three games they have five points (2-0-1) and have outscored their opponents 14-8, which includes a 7-3 throttling of Tampa and a 4-1 victory over the first place New York Rangers. They only trail the Bruins by 2 points but have one less game remaining. The last few weeks I didn't recognize Ottawa as a real threat to steal the division, seeing as they had like 5 more games than us and still had less points, but now their quiet comeback has them breathing right on Claude Julien's neck. With only 12 games left, the Sens have a fairly easy schedule:

3/14- @Montreal

3/16- v. Montreal

3/17- v. Toronto

3/20- v. New Jersey

3/23- @Montreal

3/24- v. Pittsburgh

3/26- @Winnipeg

3/31- @Philly 

4/1- @NY Islanders

4/3- v. Carolina

4/5- v. Boston

4/7- @New Jersey

Three games against last place Montreal Canadiens, a home game against the diminishing Toronto Maple Leafs, and back to back games against the Isles and Hurricanes are all games Ottawa will need to take advantage of and come away with two points. The game staring me in the face is April 5th against our Boston Bruins. This one could have huge playoff implications and could serve as a preview to the first round playoff series between the two teams. If worse comes to worse and the Bruins fall out of first place theres a good possibility they'll fall down behind the Atlantic Division and into 7th place. But for now, lets take it one game at a time. Tonight Ottawa plays Montreal, and yes, we actually have to cheer for Montreal for the next 3 days (that was so painful to type). The game won't be on either NHL Network or NBC Sports Network, but if you really want to watch it there's this great site, atdhenet.tv where you can watch basically any sports game going on. Is it legal? I don't know. Is it awesome? Yes.