from Scott Burnside of ESPN,

Hey, it's a nice story the Ottawa Senators jumping back into the playoff fray with a cadre of talented young players. And it's been fun to watch the plucky Florida Panthers continue to nip at the heels of the Boston Bruins. And while it's become an interesting storyline, it's highly unlikely to become anything more than that for the Panthers, because we're talking about the Boston Bruins here.

The Bs are 4-0-1 in their last five and have points in seven of their last 10 games after an emphatic 5-3 win over the Detroit Red Wings on Sunday, a score that flattered Detroit given that Boston was up comfortably 4-1 after the second period.

The Bruins have 17 games left, and if they went a pedestrian 8-8-1 that would give them 93 points and mean that Florida would have to come up with 22 points in their last 16 games (10-4-2?) while Ottawa would need 23 points in their last 18 games (11-6-1?) to jump ahead of the Bruins. In short, unless the Bruins go off the deep end again the notion of a playoff race is really only theoretical, even with a big game looming between Ottawa and Boston on Tuesday.

continue for more from the ESPN hockey bunch including Pierre LeBrun on the Flames...