Montreal Canadiens<\/p>\n
When we sent in our season predictions, my Atlantic list read: Montreal Canadiens, Tampa Bay Lightning, Toronto Maple Leafs. Two out of three ain’t bad, right? Anyway, I figure I should stick with the Canadiens to finish tops in a division that is going right down to the wire. Since March 21, the Canadiens have played 10 games. They’ve lost just one, getting shut out against the New Jersey Devils on Sunday, but they’re among the hottest teams in hockey — and one that’s almost impossible to close out. On Tuesday, for example, Nick Suzuki<\/a>\u00a0scored the game-tying goal with 21 seconds left in regulation, a game that would eventually end in a 4-3 shootout win against the Florida Panthers. It was just another example of another Canadiens player coming up big in the clutch, and that’s exactly what I think they’ll do across the final four games of the regular season; come up big in the clutch and win the division. — Amalie Benjamin, senior writer<\/p>\n While the Lightning and Sabres have been getting most of the attention, the Canadiens have been on a tear, going 9-0-1 behind the goal-scoring prowess of Cole Caufield<\/a>, the leadership of Suzuki and the goaltending of Jakub Dobes<\/a>. Their game with the Lightning on Thursday would likely decide who wins the Atlantic, and with the way both teams have been playing lately, I give the edge to Montreal. Of course, they don’t hold the regulation-wins tiebreaker against Tampa Bay or Buffalo, so they will need to win the division outright and I believe they will. — Bill Price, Editor-in-Chief\u00a0<\/p>\n Let’s not overthink this and just look at the team playing its best hockey of the season right now. That’s the Canadiens, winners of nine of their past 10 games. They obviously need to win against the Lightning on Thursday for me to feel totally confident in this pick, but I’m confident in the Canadiens ability to get the job done on home ice. They won 4-1 against the Lightning in Tampa on March 31. The Canadiens are clicking whereas the Lightning have lost two in a row and three of five, and the Sabres, while they’ve won their past two games, didn’t look exactly like world beaters in the win against the Rangers at Madison Square Garden. Mark this down: The Canadiens will pull into a points tie with the Sabres on Thursday and keep rolling through weekend back-to-back against the Columbus Blue Jackets at home on Saturday and the New York Islanders on the road Sunday. — Dan Rosen, senior writer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Montreal Canadiens When we sent in our season predictions, my Atlantic list read: Montreal Canadiens, Tampa Bay Lightning,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-574323","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}