Each team has just a handful of games to play in the EURO regular season and the final playoff berths in both conferences are still up for grabs.
In the Northern Conference, Stockholm has inexplicably fallen by the wayside and are looking at very long odds to sneak into the 8th and final place in the conference. With 7 games left, the Eagles are 7 points behind 8th-place Dublin, but they will also have to climb over 9th-place Gothenberg, which has a 5-point lead over Stockholm.
Belfast, Minsk, Moscow and Helsinki have clinched the top four playoff spots, London will surely get in at number 5, and St. Petersburg has positioned itself nicely, 3 points into playoff safety with games in hands over the teams chasing. One of those teams – Gothenburg – has three games left to
The EURO Cup
play against the Red Stars. One of those two teams could really hurt the other in the next 8 days.
It looks like the race is really down to Edinburgh, Dublin and Gothenburg fighting for the last two spots. Tuesday’s game in Edinburgh will be a big one because Gothenburg comes to town to make it another one of those proverbial 4-point games. Minsk is also among Edinburgh’s opponents for the last 5 games and they have no easy foes. They should be able to add 4 points to their total. Three of Dublin’s remaining 4 games are against teams higher than them in the standings, so 2 points more is likely unless they can upset London, Minsk or Lisbon.
The Southern Conference playoff picture is just as fuzzy. Berlin, Paris, Lisbon and Athens are safely packed 1-4 at the top of the conference, with Bratislava trying to hold off Madrid for 5th place. Seventh-, eighth- and ninth-place will go to Zurich, Prague and Geneva, but we’ll probably have to wait the full two weeks to find out exactly who wins the playoff spots and who is left out. Zurich has 7 games remaining, a one-point lead over Prague and 2-point lead over Geneva. The latter two teams have only 4 games remaining, but the Lions’ advantage in games left is deceiving. They have two against Berlin, one against Belfast and one against Moscow in there, making tonight’s home game against Munich and tomorrow’s visit to Prague pretty important. Prague’s remaining games include the Zurich game, tough games against Athens and Berlin and a contest against the 24-th place team, Oslo. Geneva’s four remaining games look a tad easier, with Bern, Munich, Moscow and Madrid.
The President’s Trophy is still in doubt, with two teams chasing it. Belfast has 120 points with 5 games to play, while the Smurfs of Berlin have 116 points with 6 games left.
At the other end of the standings, Oslo has the best chance (22.22 percent) of landing the top pick in the draft, and will at worst pick second. Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel will be available in those two positions. Unlike the NHL draft, there could be two lotteries before the draft. This is from the Game Guide:
“9.8- A team cannot lose more than one rank in this lottery.
9.10- Ex.: The team that finished 22nd wins the lottery, and will draft 1st overall. The teams that finished 23rd and 24th will automatically be allocated the ranks #2 and #3, because they can’t lose more than one rank. After that, rank #4 is allocated using the lottery among the 5 remaining teams, and so on.”
