Morning Line Archives: April 23-29

April 23-April 29

The NHL playoffs hit the conclusion of the first round and will start conference semi-final action by the weekend. The NBA wraps up its regular season on Thursday and begins the postseason on Saturday. And major league baseball enters the final week of April. TheSportsNotebook will divide its content schedule into three general parts

Part One: Monday thru Wednesday—Our daily NHL playoff reports will be up each morning, recapping the previous night and looking ahead. If you like hockey, but aren’t the type to watch it on TV, you can follow the entire NHL postseason right here at TheSportsNotebook, every game and every series. We’ll also preview second-round series as they come up. Right now Los Angeles-St. Louis is the only matchup set in stone, though no schedule has yet been set.

We’ve got over two weeks of baseball under our belt, and there will be two divisional overviews each day during this three-day period. We’ll start on Monday with the AL West and NL Central. Look for those to go online by late afternoon/early evening, and in the meantime tune into my podcast appearance with Greg DePalma at PrimeSportsNetwork at 3 PM ET.

Part Two: Thursday-Friday—Daily hockey reports continue as usual. And TheSportsNotebook will preview all eight first-round series in the NBA playoffs. For Thursday, we’ve got Boston-Atlanta and Indiana-Orlando set, and coming up in the evening will be San Antonio-Utah and Memphis-LA Clippers, with the remaining four first-round matchups previewed on Friday. Chicago-Philly and Miami-New York are up as of 4 PM ET, with Oklahoma City-Dallas and LA Lakers-Denver coming up Friday night.

There will also be previews of the NHL second round matchups, with Western Conference matchups of Los Angeles-St. Louis & Nashville-Phoenix going up Thursday, while Washington-NY Rangers  and New Jersey-Philly  go up Friday.

Part Three: Saturday–will be a complete NBA Playoff Extravaganza, with links to all series previews, betting line information on each team’s odds and final predictions from TheSportsNotebook, the same genius outlet who gave you the Detroit Red Wings to win the Stanley Cup (though in fairness to myself, I picked the LA over Vancouver upset). For Saturday there will also be a preview of NASCAR action and hockey reports continue.

Finally there will be additions to the Historical Museum that I hope you’ll take a look around at. We’ll look back with regret at the year 2000, when good people everywhere had to endure the Yankees concluding a dynasty and the Lakers beginning one. And for 2001, we’ll celebrate a great year in the desert. The Arizona basketball team reached the NCAA final in April, and the Diamondbacks won an epic World Series in the fall. (Editor’s Note: I’ll have to push the 2001 article back to next week due to some time constraints and…well, my own decision to attend the Wisconsin spring football game on Saturday.)