The Toronto Maple Leafs and the Eastern Conference: Playoff Locks and Contenders

5 Teams for 3 Spots

Oh the Drama!

The Eastern Conference should have a fairly entertaining playoff race with five teams trying to win the final three spots.

To recap, the locks to make the playoffs are your Toronto Maple Leafs, the Carolina Hurricanes, the New York Rangers, the New Jersey Devils and the Stanley Cup Winning Florida Panthers.

Teams that will surely miss the playoffs are the Blue Jackets, Canadiens, Red Wings, Capitals, Islanders and Flyers.

And that brings us to the up-and-coming Ottawa Senators, now rocking an elite goalie in Linus Ullmark.

The Sabres blue-line is too good for them not to eventually contend.

Tampa and Boston are formerly great teams on the downswing. The Bruins always seem to get worse but their players just roll along at the top of the league. It would be nuts to count them out despite the fact they don't really look like a playoff team on paper.

Finally, the Pittsburgh Penguins: They missed the playoffs last year, but their roster is still great and they are unlikely to face such bad luck on the power-play again. Erik Karlsson, Gino Malkin and Sidney Crosby are still on the team and I wouldn't bet against them.

With all that said, here is what I think the playoffs will look like next season and please note, I'm just going by total points and not distributing the teams based on the NHL's wacky playoff seeding system:

1. Toronto Maple Leafs 2. Buffalo Sabres 3. New Jersey Devils 4. Carolina Hurricanes 4. New York Rangers 6. Pittsburgh Penguins 7. Florida Panthers 8. Ottawa Senators