The playoff races — NHL

With the All-Star Game on its crazy attention over, teams have officially embarked on the final stretch of the 2015-16 NHL Regular Season.

Four of the five Midwest-based NHL teams are in the thick of the NHL Playoff race — three on the inside while one tries to find a way in. For the fifth team, the focus has to already shift to  the 2016-17 NHL season.

Chicago — The defending Stanley Cup champs used a solid month of January to take over top spot in Central Division and the team aims to stay there until the end of the regular season.

After enduring a bit of a speed bump right ahead of the All-Star break, the Hawks returned from the long weekend with a pair of road wins and as this is written the team is preparing for a pair of huge games against the Stars, in Dallas Saturday and then back at the United Center the following Thursday.

With the two wins this week, the Hawks currently sit three points in front of the Stars with 74 points, but also three extra games played. Third in both the Central Division and West Conference is the Blues with 66 points.

Artemi Panarin has a goal and three assists in the two games since returning while Jonathan Toews scored twice against Arizona Thursday, including the game winner in overtime — his 21st of the season. Crawford picked up the wins in both games, his 29th and 30th of the season so far.

The playoff future looks bright for the Hawks who simply want to keep winning to secure home ice advantage as long as possible as it hopes for another run to the Stanley Cup.

St. Louis -After a couple of seasons being the dominant regular season team in this division, the Blues currently sit third in the Central, but also third overall in the West Conference. With an eight point gap between Blues and first place Chicago as well as a five point gap between the Blues and Dallas who have also played a couple of games fewer, the Blues would love to get things going in the latter part of the season to secure home ice advantage in the opening round of the post season.

The Blues have been a bit of a hot and cold team and as of late it has dropped three of four going back to a few games before the All Star Break. The Blues returned from the break with an important win at Nashville, Troy Brouwer scoring the game’s only goal just 65 seconds from the final buzzer to keep the Blues comfortably in front of the fourth place Predators. However, on Thursday night the Blues fell on home ice 3-1 to the Sharks, a late goal by Matt Nieto clinching the road win for the Sharks.

The Blues will face a desperate Minnesota Wild team on home ice Saturday and stay on home ice to play Winnipeg on Tuesday.

Minnesota – The Wild suddenly finds itself on the outside looking in at the playoff picture as a 3-7-1-2 record through the month of January saw the team drop out of playoff contention. Since the break, the Wild have dropped a of road games to the Islanders (5-3) Tuesday and then the Rangers Thursday, extending its current skid to four straight games. Things don’t get any easier as the Wild move on to St. Louis on Saturday before finally returning home to play Dallas and Washington — two the league’s best teams at this point.

Against the Isles on Tuesday, the visiting Wild got the lone goal of the opening period as Charlie Coyle notched his 14th but the home side scored twice in the first 5:07 of the second and carried a 3-2 lead into the final period. Islanders padded its lead with two more early in the third and the Wild got one back just past the halfway mark as Nino Niederreiter picked up his second point of the contest. Jason Pominville scored the other Wild goal and Matt Dumba picked up two assists. Devan Dubnyk made 25 saves in the contest and J.F. Berube was the game’s third star with a 40 save effort and the win in goal. John Tavares had a goal and assist and was named as first star and the second star went to Mikhael Grabovski who scored the first goal and set up Tavares for the last one.

Two nights later at MSG, the Wild opened up a 2-0 first period lead with goals from Ryan Carter and Matt Dumba, but then never scored again as the Rangers tied it with two in the middle frame and scored the game winner in the sixth minute and added insurance with just over a minute to go.

J.T. Miller picked up a goal and assist to lead the Rangers and was named the Game’s first star, second star going to Derick Brassard who also scored his 16th of the season and added an assist. Ryan McDonagh scored the game’s first goal and assisted later as well.

Henrik Lundqvist made 16 saves to pick up the win in goal and Dubnyk stopped 26 in a losing effort.

The Wild are not in dire straights — yet. They certainly need to get things heading north in a hurry though if they want to stay close to the playoff line. The month of February will be very important for the Wild.

Detroit — The suddenly youthful Red Wings are in a good, but maybe notsolid position, currently sitting fourth in the Atlantic Division.

They have stayed in the hunt all season long, but a rough return from the All Star Break with losses on the road against both the Lightning and Panthers see the two teams they are trying to catch move just a little bit further away while at the same time allowing the Bruins to slip past as well into third place in the division

The Wings cannot afford to drop off of the pace as they currently inhabit the wild card spot and there are plenty of teams from the Metropolitan Division (Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Carolina ) that are not far off of the pace.

At Tampa Bay on Tuesday, Gustav Nyqvist scored the lone goal for the Wings, his 14th as teams played through a scoreless first period and the hosts grabbed a 2-1 middle period lead with goals from J.T. Brown and Tyler Johnson. Nikita Kucherov notched his 21st of the season in third period and also contributed an assist on his way to First Star honors.

Petr Mrazek handled 20 of 23 in goal for the Wings and Ben Bishop stopped 24 for the Lightning.

Two nights later the Panthers busted the game open early claiming a 3-1 first period lead. Dylan Larkin scored the lone first period goal for the Wings and had his team within a shot when he scored his second in the middle period. Panthers though owned a 4-2 lead at the break and went on to win it with a 2-1 edge through the final 20, the last goal into an empty Detroit net.

Mike Green scored the third Wings goal while Vincent Trochek scored twice for the Panthers, others added by Brandon Pirri, Aleksander Barkov, Derek Mackenzie and Jaromir Jagr. Roberto Luongo turned aside 36 shots to grab the win and Jimmy Howard stopped 27 for the Wings.

The Wings return home for the next five beginning with the Islanders on Saturday night and then Florida, Ottawa, Colorado and finally Boston on Valentines Day.

Columbus — Technically, the Blue Jackets still have are far from mathematically eliminated, but it says here, it’s time to start thinking about the 2016-17 season. The Blue Jackets all but fell out of the playoff race when it lost its first eight games of the season and 13 of its first 20 games.

The team has never really recovered and things went from bad to worse when Sergei Bobrovsky entered the IR in December and while he has returned twice, he has returned to the sidelines and doesn’t seem close to coming back at this point.

While the chances of a comeback are certainly slim, the team has picked up wins in four of its past five games, including two of three since the All Star Break. The lone loss in that stretch was the first game back as the team fell 5-1 to Edmonton in the long awaited return match for Connor McDavid in the first game after the All Star Break. The Blue Jackets though salvaged a solid Canadian West Coast swing with a 2-1 win in shootout at Vancouver Thursday and a 2-1 win Friday in Calgary as well.

The Jackets currently sit in a three-way tie for last place in the East Conference and seem closer to the first overall draft pick than the post season. But they did get hot right at this point last season and there is still 28 games to try to carry some momentum.

One bright spot for the Blue Jackets has been the emergence of Joonas Korpisalo who now has played seven straight games in goal. He and Anton Forsberg have both served notice they are ready to make the move from Cleveland but of course that is tough with Bobrovsky as the main guy in Columbus.

With the recent games, Korpisalo now has a winning record of 7-6-2 with the Blue Jackets with a 2.64 Goals Against Average and a Save Percentage of .919.

The Jackets return home for a five game homestand starting Tuesday when the Islanders pay a visit. Who knows? Maybe a very different version of the NHL Playoff Races will be written next week — or in the weeks ahead. It’s a long shot though.