The Florida Panthers and Phoenix Coyotes celebrated their first division titles with convincing victories on the final day of the National Hockey League's regular season Saturday. The Panthers, set to return to the playoffs for the first time in 12 seasons, smothered the Carolina Hurricanes 4-1 to claim the Southeast title, while Phoenix won the Pacific crown with their fifth consecutive victory, a 4-1 win over Minnesota. Marcel Goc, John Madden and Stephen Weiss sparked Florida to a 3-0 lead and Mikael Samuelsson added an empty netter late in the third. Joni Pitkanen scored for Carolina. The third-seeded Panthers will face sixth-seeded New Jersey in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals. Taylor Pyatt scored twice for Phoenix, who took third place in the Western Conference and will face the Chicago Blackhawks in the playoffs next week. The Coyotes have gone 20-6-5 since Feb. 1. The Southeast crown went down to the wire after Washington beat Eastern Conference winners New York Rangers 4-1 earlier Saturday. A Washington win and Florida loss in regulation would have given the Capitals their fifth consecutive division title. Nicklas Backstrom put the Capitals up 4-0 in the second after goals by Alex Ovechkin, Mathieu Perreault and John Carlson in the opening period. Braden Holtby had a strong showing in net for the Capitals, making 35 saves with starting netminder Michal Neuvirth and primary back-up Tomas Vokoun injured. Western Conference champion Vancouver secured the Presidents' Trophy as the NHL team with the best regular season record thanks to a 3-0 win over the Edmonton Oilers and New York's loss to Washington. The Canucks finished with 111 points. The Eastern champ Rangers and St. Louis had 109. Pittsburgh's Evgeni Malkin claimed his second NHL points scoring title in four years, grabbing a goal (his 50th) and an assist to help the fourth-seeded Penguins top Philadelphia 4-2 in a match-up of teams who will meet in the postseason. Malkin finished the regular season with 109 points. Sydney Crosby also had a goal and assist for Pittsburgh. Tampa Bay's Steven Stamkos took the top goal scorer's title, becoming the first player since Ovechkin in 2008 to score 60 in a season. He got the milestone goal 3:29 into the third as the Lightning beat Winnipeg 4-3 in overtime. In other games it was: Boston 4, Buffalo 3; New Jersey 4, Ottawa 2 ; Chicago 3, Detroit 2; San Jose 3, Los Angeles 2; Calgary 5, Anaheim 2; Montreal 4, Toronto 1; Columbus 7, NY Islanders 3; St. Louis 3, Dallas 2; Nashville 6, Colorado 1.
