The New York Islanders and Columbus Blue Jackets are really, really good at winning a little less than half of their games. But tonight and Thursday, NHL fans finally will get a conclusive answer as to which squad can rightly claim to be the Most Mediocre in the Metro.
Both are in a state of standings limbo so perfect you’d suspect it was by design: So far behind the playoff teams, and for so long, that there’s not even a “well maybe if there’s an asteroid” thread of hope that they’ll move up.
And yet, they’re so far ahead of the division and conference’s truly putrid teams that it would take a truly awful stretch of hockey to sink down to the conference’s basement dwellers.