The Carolina Hurricanes can clinch the Metropolitan Division and home ice in at least the first two rounds of the Stanley Cup Playoffs by getting their game against Boston to overtime on Wednesday night at Lenovo Center. It is Carolina's final regular-season home game, and the last stop on Boston's four-game road trip.
Carolina entered the game alone atop the Eastern Conference with 104 points, while Boston arrived five points from moving out of the wild card with four games left. The Bruins likely can still finish as the first wild card team, but they also come in after losing an overtime game to the Philadelphia Flyers on Sunday and taking just one point from their last three games after road losses to Tampa and Florida.
The standings around them are tight enough that Carolina's night could reshape more than one bracket. Pittsburgh's best mathematical outcome is to tie Carolina in points, but even that would not be enough if the Penguins were to do it only by winning every remaining game in regulation, since Carolina would still own the division on the Regulation Win tiebreaker. Pittsburgh does not play again until Thursday, and Carolina also sits two points ahead of Montreal in the Eastern Conference race.
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That is why the result in Raleigh matters far beyond the building. Buffalo beat Tampa the night before this story was written, tightening the Atlantic race, but Tampa remained in control of the division because it had a game in hand, was tied in regulation wins with Buffalo after playing one fewer game, and still held a two-edge in Regulation and Overtime Wins. Montreal and Tampa are scheduled to play Thursday in Montreal, which could further shuffle the picture.
For Boston, the path is simple and unforgiving. Two of its final four games are against Carolina, and the others come against Tampa and Columbus. For Carolina, the next stretch is even more revealing: the team leaves this one and heads into a road trip that runs through Chicago, Utah, Philadelphia and Long Island, with a source saying there is a chance the final games of the season could look more like preseason games than the grind Carolina has been playing all year.
That is the tension inside a late-season game that looks, on paper, like it should be just another stop. It is not. Carolina can secure a division title with one point, Boston is trying to stay alive in the bracket, and the teams may see each other again when the games matter even more.
