OTHL -- Today the first couple of teams in the Western Conference clinched playoff births. Colorado Avalanche captured the place despite not playing, and Detroit right now holding down the second place, captured a playoff birth after winning 5-2 against Florida Panthers. A game wich saw the Red Wings top line do the majority of work. Martin Rucinsky who is having a stellar season for Detroit, scored 2 goals and addded 1 assist in the game. Anson Carter and Chris Pronger both had 1 goal and 1 assist in the win. Florida got goals from Olli Jokinen and Tyler Wright, but lost Alexander Mogilny to a injury.
A couple days ago, New Jersey and Boston both qualified for the playoffs. Today they played to a 1-1 tie in New Jersey. Glen Murray (29) and Slava Kozlov (28) scored the goals in a game where the big hero was Miikka Kiprusoff who made 37 saves in the Bruins net.
Another highly interesting game was the game between Montreal and Nashville. Both Montreal and Nashville are highly involved in the playoff battle's going down in both conferences. Montreal are trying to overtake Ottawa and Tampa Bay to get into the playoffs, while Nashville are trying to hang onto there 7th place in the Western Conference. And the game where a close story. Nashville won the shots 27 to 26, but Montreal won the game 5 goals to 4.
Mike Modano (23,24), Marco Sturm (23,24) and Pavol Demitra scored the 5 Montreal goals, while Nashville had there offense provided by Adam Hall (14), Martin Erat (10), Scott Hartnell (12) and Sergei Zholtok (8). The game just saw a combined 10 powerplays for the two teams, but 6 of the goals where scored on powerplays. The two teams scored 3 powerplay goals each, in 5 tries each.