Regressing to the mean since 2015, it's the Hockey Pediocast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich.

Welcome to the Hockey Pediocast. My name is Detri Filipovich and joining me for a Sunday special here on a Monday morning final week of the NHL regular season. My good buddy Thomas Trans, Tom, what's going on in?

Dmitri, I'm excited for the playoffs. The playoff picture is slowly coming into shape. Not quickly enough in my opinion.

No, I agree. As someone who has to do playoff previews in a timely manner, we have a pretty quick turnaround. Now, it looks like the Eastern conference portion of the schedule is going to be pretty much wrapped up by Wednesday evening. Yeah. Hopefully. So that's going to allow for a nice little buffer period on Thursday to do our annual round one previews. The West really could bleed into

late Thursday night at which point the turnaround is going to become unmanageable. But you know what?

That's just a personal beef, not actually a big deal. I think the East, we're fortunate, like,

I think we're mostly fortunate to have avoided a scenario where, you know, as a result of Detroit falling well short,

basically, I thought there was this unfortunate scenario where, like, the eighth best record

would be outside the playoff picture while the ninth best record was, you know, in third place

in the Metro Division.

I'm glad we've avoided that eventuality.

Still technically true.

I mean, if you look, the Red Wings are tied for 14th in the league and points percentage with the Vegas Golden Knights who are in pole position in the Pacific Division. So that's not ideal. No, well, and that's the, in the West. I mean, maybe Vegas is going to be favored over Utah in a first round series? I think Edmonton will be.

Yes. So, but I mean, there's no question that there's a possibility that the, you know, wild card Utah mammoth are favored in their first round series, unless it's Edmonton

the wins the division, I think.

Here's a crazy idea. I think the Kings should play a play in game against the ninth seed in the east and then the winner of

that should be the second wild card in the west yeah i well first of all we need that just to get the

pro tie and tom wilson yes i mean what a what a show those three put on this weekend uh so yeah i mean

it does feel a little bit absurd.

Like the Washington Capitals and the Columbus Blue Jackets not only are going to have more points probably at the end of the season than half of the Western Conference playoff bracket, but I mean, are clearly better on true talent.

So, yeah, the extent to which this ended up being unbalanced between West and East this season is, you know, deeply unfortunate.

We're going to get into all that today.

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