Two days remain in the NHL\u2019s regular season, but its already decided which teams will battle it out in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Boston Bruins<\/a>\u2018 4-0 win over the New Jersey Devils on Tuesday locked in the four series.<\/p>\n Here are the matchups:<\/p>\n Carolina Hurricanes (Metro 1) vs.\u00a0Ottawa Senators<\/a>\u00a0(WC 2)<\/p>\n Pittsburgh Penguins (Metro 2) vs. Philadelphia Flyers (Metro 3)<\/p>\n Buffalo Sabres (Atlantic 1) vs. Boston Bruins (WC 1)<\/p>\n Tampa Bay Lightning (Atlantic 2) vs. Montreal Canadiens (Atlantic 3)<\/p>\n The Bruins\u2019 win set up a battle with the Atlantic Division-winning Buffalo Sabres, while forcing the Senators into a confrontation against the Metropolitan Division-winning Hurricanes.<\/p>\n Ottawa and Carolina have never met in the playoffs.<\/p>\n Head coach Travis Green said recently that the two teams have similar playing styles. Carolina\u2019s goaltending has wavered of late, and Linus Ullmark\u2019s been playing his best hockey. Ottawa has more than a fighting chance.<\/p>\n But getting here, it has been a lot of ups and downs.<\/p>\n The voyage this season was treacherous for the Senators, filled with bouts of goalie troubles, public statements, and \u201cwhite noise\u201d laced with perpetual drama and non-stop injury reports.<\/p>\n There were distractions all along the way: the controversy surrounding Team USA at the Olympics and the political tensions<\/a> that went with it; Keith Tkachuk\u2019s comments on his son\u2019s podcast<\/a>; and the unsavoury social media rumours that led the Senators to issue a public statement to defend their goalie Linus Ullmark.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI think you look back at the year, a lot of ups and downs, but again, it\u2019s really a long year,\u201d said defence Jake Sanderson.<\/p>\n The \u201cPesky Sens\u201d are back, but unlike previous iterations, this team might not just be pesky; it could be scary. It is the first time since the 2011-13 era that the Ottawa Senators have made the playoffs in back-to-back seasons.<\/p>\n Analytics aren\u2019t everything, but they tell a story. The Senators are top five in expected goals share, shot differential, scoring chances and high-danger chances differential at 5-on-5. Ottawa sits eighth in goals per game.<\/p>\n The playoffs start April 18.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two days remain in the NHL\u2019s regular season, but its already decided which teams will battle it out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":{"0":"post-606090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ottawa","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-ottawa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}