At first glance, doesn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary for the East series at least, including no back-to-backs. If I’m surprised at anything it’s that they chose to have Rangers-Devils on the same night as Lightning-Leafs, clearly the two marquee series on the East docket for the first round. I saw a good point elsewhere though, since they are the two marquee series both had to play on Saturday night each week for CBC and ABC, so they necessarily had to be on the same schedule throughout to do it.

Nothing more to add really here, it took this long for the full playoff schedule to come out because there were two other makeup games to be played, including an Avalanche win that gave them yet another Central division title. At least we already knew the Devils were starting at home on Tuesday and Thursday (so much for the rumors of Monday).

If you’re a Billy Joel fan you might not be happy his latest concert got moved for Game 3, but that’s the breaks – especially when you have both MSG teams playing concurrently in April.