from Travis Yost of TSN,

We are now five weeks away from the NHL trade deadline and the playoff picture is starting to take shape. But in the middle of the respective conferences, plenty of ambiguity remains.

The upcoming stretch of games is pivotal for front offices as they try to get a feel for the quality of their teams. Across the league, teams will make key strategic decisions for short-term roster management and ultimately whether or not their clubs should act as buyers or sellers on Feb. 26.

One of the interesting wrinkles at this point of the regular season is that schedule imbalance starts to take shape. We now have a pretty clear understanding of team talent across the league, and the reality is some teams will have a much easier road to the postseason than others. Depending on the team, this disparity can be rather significant.

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