The Bern Bears and the Geneva Generals, two Swiss rivals, have become the first EURO League teams to clinch playoff berths.
With less than 20 games remaining in each team’s regular season schedule. Bern has 97 points, which is 41 more than Paris, the ninth-place team in the Southern Conference. Geneva is a point behind Bern. In that conference, there is a wide divide between the top eight teams and the bottom four. It appears that Paris, Zurich, Frankfurt and Athens are out of the running at this point.
There are three races to watch in the EURO league, however. First and foremost, the race for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Northern Conference looks to be a neck-and-neck battle between the Helsinki Jokerit and the Edinburgh Capitals. Helsinki has a 2-point lead in that two-team race with a lot of time left (19 games). While Edinburgh skates perfectly healthy at the moment, Helsinki is without Jarret Stoll, their 29-year-old third-line center. Stoll has 10 goals and 10 assists in 62 games and is a plus 2 for the Jokerit. He is fourth on the team in plus-minus and is the top hitting forward with 120. He has also been responsible with the puck, having taken away pucks 23 more times than he has given away pucks. The Finns will be relying on Matt Stajan and Zack Smith to pick up the slack. Both have appeared in at least 30 games this season.
If Dublin, Stockholm or Gothenberg stumble their way to prolonged losing streaks, any of them could fall out of the playoffs because they are only 6 or 7 points in front of Edinburgh. Moscow, which recently had an ownership and name change, would need a St. Petersburg-like win streak to sneak into the playoffs.
Speaking of Petrograd, the Lynx have a comfortable 9-point lead over Copenhagen for the top spot in the North and they are in a race with Bern and Geneva for the President’s Trophy, which will be awarded to the team with the most points at the end of the regular season. St. Petersburg, which got off to a snail-like start this season, has 94 points. It appears Geneva has the inside track to the trophy, with 96 points. They trail Bern by 1 point, but they have three games in hand.
The other race worth watching is at the bottom of the standings. Because there will be a draft lottery, the last place team is not guaranteed of having the top pick in the second-ever EURO draft next season, but that team will have the best chance, statistically of getting pick number one. Belfast and Minsk have 41 and 44 points respectively with 17 or fewer games to play. Frankfurt and Athens are also near the bottom, but they have a few more games to play than do the Giants and Hussars. But Athens has the additional burden of injuries to two major contributors. Forwards Nathan Horton and Ryan O’Reilly are both out with injuries and will miss about half – or more – of the remaining Greek games.
