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Looking to the East
Hockey Night in Canada's Harry Neale gives his take on the Eastern Conference's first round matchups.
(1) Ottawa
52-21-8-1, 113 pts VS (8) NY Islanders 35-24-11-2, 83 pts I'm not sure the Islanders have the goaltending it takes, but they do have a strong defence corps. It think Ottawa will win with maybe a little more trouble than you might think. Prediction: Ottawa wins series in six games (2) New Jersey 46-20-10-6, 108 pts VS (7) Boston 36-34-11-2, 87 pts New Jersey is going to beat Boston. The Bruins have trouble in goal and I don't like their defence corps as a group. On the positive side they are getting (Sergei) Samsonov back, who will give them a little offence and they could use that. But New Jersey will stifle them. Prediction: New Jersey wins series in five games (3) Tampa Bay 36-25-16-5, 93 pts VS (6) Washington 39-29-8-6, 92 pts This is a tough one. Tampa has been the better team recently, but Washington's got (Peter) Bondra and (Jaromir) Jagr and if they ever decide it's important to play I don't know if Tampa can handle them. I know Tampa is the Cinderella team of the Eastern Conference, but think Washington is going to beat them in a long series. Prediction: Washington wins series in seven games (4) Philadelphia 45-20-13-4, 107 pts VS (5) Toronto 44-28-7-3, 98 pts This is a real coin toss. You might be a little more enthused about Toronto's chances if they had all their injured players back. The Leafs may get a lot of players back during the run of the series, but a lot of them haven't played often lately and the playoffs are not an easy time to start playing again. With some hesitancy, I'm picking the Flyers over the Leafs Prediction:
Philadelphia wins series in seven games |
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