One story that I have seen no coverage of so far this playoff season is the dominance of the NHL’s Atlantic division. Of the 8 playoff teams in the east, half of them came from the Atlantic. (In other words, everybody from the Atlantic made the playoffs except the lowly Islanders). Throughout the season these four teams have been playing good hockey, and have beaten each other up countless times. If any of the Atlantic teams were in another division (like say the southeast) it is almost a given that they would have a better record than they currently possess, based solely on the weakness of the schedule. In the playoffs the 4 Atlantic teams have been unbeatable. (By anyone other than their fellow Atlantic division teams that is). No Atlantic division team has been eliminated from the playoffs by a non-Atlantic division team. In fact, with the exception of the Flyers letting the Capitals win 2 games once they were up 3-1 in the opening round, no Atlantic division team has even struggled against a non-Atlantic team. (Ottawa was spent, Montreal stole a game and lost in 5). The conference finals now features two Atlantic division teams (Pittsburgh and Philadelphia), making it a given that the division to represent the east will be the Atlantic. I realize that any division trying to claim the title “best in hockey” will have a hard time making its claim without the perennial president’s trophy winner Detroit in its midst, but Detroit plays in a very weak division and spends most of its season beating up on weak teams. If you want the single most dominant division in hockey right now (not the division with the most dominant team), its clearly the Atlantic.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 7:12 am by Ari and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.