[MarkSummers]

Considering more than half the teams in the conference make the playoffs, as long as you're not one of the two or three worst teams in the conference you got a chance. If Columbus made the playoffs this year, I would consider it a mild surprise. I would like their chances even more if they had a proven goalie. Leclaire only played in 33 games last year. Anyway, there's usually a few teams come from low expectations before the season to make the playoffs. Sometimes they do even better than a first round exit like Buffalo and Carolina last year.

As for the hat tricks, I'm still trying to find out if there have been two natural hat tricks in one game or three in one night of hockey. Smyth's impressive time of finishing the natural hat trick in 2 minutes 1 second is not a record. That belongs to Bill Mosienko who did in 21 seconds in 1952.