Tuesdays with Dani: Three games left

While the Capitals and Flyers are tied for points right now, battling it out for the top of the Eastern Conference, the Lightning are just one point back from the Penguins. Both the Bolts and Pens each have three games left in their schedule and if they end in a tie the Lightning hold the tiebreaker as they have more wins. Of course its sitll possible the Pens could take the Atlantic division and change the standings completely, the next three games for each team will be rather interesting.

Your links for this week after the jump

Your Lightning links:

• Tonight's game against the Sabres lands itself in ESPN's games to watch this week
• The Bolts keep winning even if our powerplay isn't capitalizing (St. Petersburg Times)
• Dustin Tokarski was cut under his chin on Saturday in a gash that required 27 stitches and that stating the obvious that Matt Smaby and Marc-Andre Bergeron are not are strongest defencemen (St. Petersburg Times)
• The Pensblog breaks down the remaining regular season schedules for the teams in the playoff hunt
• Rolson makes Pucks Daddy's list of the top 10 players they'd like to see win their first Stanley Cup
  

Your links from around the NHL:

• The Rangers battled back from being down 3-0 to Bruins and won the game 4-3. In the final four minutes of the game, they scored three goals 2:55 seconds apart  (TSN)
• Some New York and New Jersey press are boycotting the NHL Awards this year. Puck Daddy has a recap on why, the Islander's response to it and why this boycott matters
• Darren Dreger reports that the Isles won't let Evgeni Nabokov play in the upcoming World Hockey Championships
• 15 year old Aaron Ekblad has been granted "exceptional player" status by the Hockey Canada allowing him join the OHL a year early. At 15, he's already six foot three and 200 pounds. John Tavares was the last player to be granted this status back in 2005 (TSN)
• Elliotte Friedman's 30 Thoughts and on Canucks fans being cautiously optimistic about their team ever after having just won the President's trophy
• Pierre LeBrun's Weekend Wrap: nixing the Ilya Bryzgalov to Toronto rumors, the Caps' D injuries, and a possible Adam Foote retirement
• A great piece on Mike Richards being a good captain and why the media sometimes makes a story more about themselves than about the sport they cover (Daily Times via Flyers Goal Scored By...)
• The Province on the East coast bias and the Canucks
  
• Jonathan Willis objects to the Hart trophy buzz around the Sedins (Houses of Hockey)
• Sad news on the Yale University hockey player Mandi Schwartz, who made headlines last summer in the hockey community for campaining for donors for bone marrow/stem cells while battling leukemia, passed away this past weekend at the age of 23
• The Royal Half has another edition of Pundays out. My favorite from this week: Kippin' the Faith
• Days of Y'Orr says the new Bruins Bear commercial leaves a lot of unanswered questions, like do bears wash their hands?
• A University of Waterloo professor and some of his students have built a robot that is the first robotic representation of the slapshot. Yes, they built a robot to take slapshots (The Star)
• The Globe and Mail roundtables the question: Who is the NHL's top defenceman?
• Justin Bourne in USA Today asks: is finishing your check always the right thing to do? How about during the playoffs?
• Canucks defenseman Sami Salo thought that his ruptured Achilles tendon last summer would end his career. He wasn't the only one who thought that, but I'm glad he's back (Globe and Mail)
• Dan Steinberg of the DC Sports Blog talks about the impact that Jason Arnott has made on the Caps' locker room
• Good piece on Leafs' prospect Matt Frattin, how after getting kicked out of North Dakota and losing his scholarship, he worked 11 hour days on a cement crew in Edmonton, and ended up borrowing money to pay out of state tuition after getting a chance to come back to play for the team again (The Star)
• Taro Tsujimoto was drafted in the 11th round of the 1974 draft by the Buffalo Sabres. Never heard of him? That's because he doesn't actually exist and makes CNN's list of successful people that never existed