It is an annoying problem because, unlike some problems in the world, this one is easy to fix and obvious to anyone who thinks about it for a few minutes.
Yes, if the Bruins were playing a couple 90 point teams here I would not think about it at all this year ("tough luck suckers" would be my attitude). But it should come as hardly a shock that a forum about the Bruins hits this in the Spring of 2018.
There are two issues here also:
1. The NHL does not play enough of an unbalanced schedule to make the divisions really meaningful. It seems more like a way to always have an assessment problem than a real emphasis on divisions.
2. There is no reason to have wild cards at all, even if you just love divisions.
The NHL should either:
1. Play a more severely unbalanced schedule and commit to "rivalries" and then just let the top four from each division go to the playoffs.
or
2. Scrap the whole division thing altogether and just let the top eight in the conference into the playoffs.
(If you are into the whole division thing, in the playoffs, you could either keep it all in the division or have #1 play #4 from the other division and re-bracket after each round.)