AJC > Sports > Thrashers > Blog > Archives > 2005 > December > 05
Monday, December 5, 2005
Playoff math doesn’t add up
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’ve been doing some math lately to figure out what the Thrashers need to do to make the playoffs. It’s not a pretty picture.
Plenty of the season is left, 55 games or two-thirds to be precise, but the Thrashers enter the day 10 points out of the final playoff berth. That’s no small margin. So if they win five in a row, then they’re back to Square One.
Meanwhile, if they play the rest of the season the way they did in their record-setting November, they’d still miss the playoffs if Tampa and Toronto kept playing at the pace they have all season. So, basically, they need one or more teams to completely fall apart, the teams that are ahead of them like New Jersey (which will soon get back star winger Patrick Elias) not to get hot and they need to get pretty hot themselves.
Part of the problem is that the teams that those teams they’re chasing — Buffalo, Tampa Bay and Toronto — are pretty hot right now while the Thrashers are stuck in another goal-scoring drought.
At this point in the season, how bullish are you on the Thrashers’ chances to still make the playoffs?
