The end of the All-Star break also coincides with the beginning of the National Hockey League's stretch drive, a time when the championship pretenders sort themselves out from the contenders; and the real push for positioning and reinforcements gets underway in earnest.Much of this season's focus has been on parity -- it was a major part of Saturday's state-of-the-union address by commissioner Gary ("the competitive balance is terrific") Bettman -- but this isn't the first year that parity has been a buzzword, so you wonder, is it any different this time around?And the answer, based on a year-over-year statistical comparison, is absolutely yes.Consider that last year, the gap between the No. 1 team at the break (for those with short memories, it was the Nashville Predators, believe it or not) and the 30th-place Philadelphia Flyers was 44 points. This year, it is 36 -- pretty close in other words.A more telling measure is the gap between second-best and second-worst teams at the All-Star break. Last year, it was 32 points.This year, it's only 21 points (from the No. 2 Ottawa Senators down to the No. 29 Tampa Bay Lightning). Normally, you'd think that a team lingering at the bottom of the conference standings such as Tampa wouldn't be harboring any playoff thoughts whatsoever, with about a third of the schedule to play, but you'd be wrong.The weakness in the Southeast, where the Carolina Hurricanes hold down top spot with 52 points, means that all five teams in that division are alive, even though only one, the Washington Capitals has a winning record. That's thanks to the NHL's current playoff format in which each division winner is not only guaranteed a postseason spot, but also earns no worse than the conference's third seed and home-ice advantage in the playoffs. And anyone who thinks that doesn't matter has forgotten the lessons of 2002, when Carolina finished with the 17th-best record overall in the NHL, but made the playoffs ahead of a team with more points (the Edmonton Oilers) and then went on to qualify for the Stanley Cup final.In effect, Tampa needs to make up seven points on Carolina between here and the end of the season and has two games in hand to do it. Will they throw in the towel on the current season, if the race in the Southeast remains as mediocre and tight as it is? Not likely.On a percentage basis, the biggest loser in the East, after Tampa, happens to be the Toronto Maple Leafs, a team that finds itself six points back of the New York Islanders, the team that edged them for the final playoff spot in last year's thrilling fight to the finish. Last year, two teams that were outside of the playoff picture at the All-Star break, the ninth-place Rangers and 12th-place Islanders made it, while two teams that were safely in the mix, the Montreal Canadiens and the Hurricanes, fell out of the raceThe Canadiens' collapse was significant -- they were nine points clear of the Rangers and 11 up on the Islanders as play resumed in the final week of January. Montreal's record today is almost identical to that of last year (60 points compared to 59 after 49 games), so their challenge will be to hold it together this time around.The real development though is unfolding over in the West, where the playoff race was mostly decided by the trade deadline. The eight Western teams that held down playoff spots at the all-star break last year all made it to the post-season. The bottom six were finished early; only an unbelievable surge by the Colorado Avalanche over the final 20 games, in which they lost just once in regulation, permitted them to almost overtake the slumping Flames. But even with Calgary going south and Colorado playing the best hockey in the league over the final six weeks (they would have been an interesting dark-horse Cup contender had they made it), it wasn't enough to make up the ground.This year's race to the wire promises to be far more interesting. Detroit is in; Los Angeles is out; only 11 points separated the 13 middle teams in the West (compared to 27 at last year's All-break). At this point, you'd be hard-pressed to concede a playoff spot to any of them, given how tight the standings are.So the next four weeks -- leading up to the trading deadline -- should prove interesting. If the races remain as tight as they are now, the deadline could reward a bold seller, willing to make players available, even if they cling to a mathematical chance of qualifying for post-season play.After all, even if 29 teams think they're still in, only 16 actually qualify for the playoffs. The Kings may be the only team absolutely developing a next-year strategy at the moment. A few others might be wise to join them.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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