Evan’s Daily: Landeskog Out For Playoffs, Eastern Conference Playoffs Set

Friday is the final day of the NHL regular season, and all of the Eastern Conference playoff matchups are set. The West isn’t quite there yet.

With the Colorado Avalanche, they got the news they may have been expecting, but didn’t want to hear: Gabriel Landeskog will not be playing this season. It turns out, it might be worse than that.

All that and more in this Friday edition of Evan’s Daily.

Colorado Hockey Now

The Avalanche released the information themselves, but Gabriel Landeskog will not be returning to play in the NHL playoffs.

I’m going to take today to gather my thoughts on this Landeskog situation, because it doesn’t just affect this season. It sounds like this could easily linger into next season. Here’s the full transcript of his press conference.

Mikko Rantanen scored his 55th goal of the season, breaking the previous single-season record set by Joe Sakic in an Avalanche uniform.

It wasn’t pretty. In fact, it was a remarkably boring game, but the Avalanche pulled out the win against the Jets, setting up a must-win game on Friday for the division.

Nathan MacKinnon said he knew Landeskog wasn’t coming back a month ago. Bednar said he found out on Thursday. Either way, Avalanche players and their coach talked about the loss of Landeskog and what it means going into the playoffs.

Avalanche Playoff Schedule

We don’t have a full schedule, but we know the first two home games for the Avalanche will be Tuesday, April 18 and Thursday, April 20. I imagine we’ll have the full schedule after the games are completed on Friday night.

Around the NHL

The playoff matchups in the Eastern Conference are set, and they are:

Boston vs. Florida

Toronto vs. Tampa Bay

Carolina vs. New York Islanders

New Jersey Devils vs. New York Rangers

In the West, there are two matchups set. They are:

Vegas vs. Winnipeg

Edmonton vs. Los Angeles

It’s the NHL playoffs. All of them will be fun matchups, and even the ones you don’t expect to be that fun (I’m looking at you, Carolina/NYI). The best time of the year is almost here. Time to get excited.

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