NHL Playoffs: Teams on the postseason bubble
As January nears its end, the sprint towards the NHL playoffs begins.
With a little under three months and less than 40 games remaining, the playoff picture is looking clearer after every game. As Fansided’s Mike Majeski suggested earlier this week, it may even be already set.
This is when every win and every point matter.
Many players and coaches like to say that they’re still fighting for a playoff spot. Some fans believe that, even though their team is out of it at the moment, they will still see them participate in the NHL playoffs.
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The reality is that it’s become increasingly difficult for teams to rally and sneak into the post-season with a late surge.
The fact that teams inevitably face eachother, and that many of those games go to overtime and/or a shootout, means that teams simply cannot make up a ton of ground in a short period of time.
In the salary cap era, a total of 17 teams who were on the outside looking in on February 1st went on to make the NHL playoffs in eight seasons.
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Each and every one of those teams was within 7 points or less of their conference’s last available post-season position in the standings.
Conversely, of the 17 teams who got bumped out, only the 2010-11 Dallas Stars were more than 7 points from the last spot.
A look at this year’s standings so far reveals that only five teams are within 7 points of a playoff spot.
The Florida Panthers (7 points) in the Eastern Conference, and the Los Angeles Kings (1 point), Colorado Avalanche (4 points), Dallas Stars (6 points) and Minnesota Wild (7 points) in the Western Conference.
That list also lends further credence to the idea that the Western Conference is the more competitive of the two.
The teams on the opposite side of that equation?
The Eastern Conference is fairly straight forward, having only the Boston Bruins within 7 points of the Panthers.
The Atlantic Division rivals have faced each other just once so far this season, a 3-2 overtime win by the Bruins at home.
Three more games remain, two of which will be in Florida. All three take place between March 21st and April 9th (Florida’s season ends on April 11th).
If the Panthers can manage to close the gap by just 2 or 3 points before those games, they have a legitimate chance at stealing that last spot away from Boston.
Having said all that, of those 17 teams that made the NHL playoffs late in the year, only the 2005-06 San Jose Sharks were able to erase a deficit of that size.
The Western Conference is a different matter entirely.
Of the four teams clinging to a playoff spot by 7 points or less, only the Winnipeg Jets are doing so by more than 2 points.
The Calgary Flames and Vancouver Canucks are just a point up on the defending Stanley Cup Champion LA Kings while the San Jose Sharks have a 2 point cushion.
Of the 34 games remaining for the Kings, 8 of them are against one of the four teams they’re chasing.
In addition, they have four games against the other Western “bubble” teams currently outside the NHL playoffs.
That’s the good news for Darryl Sutter’s team. The bad news? 22 of their 34 games are against playoff teams.
It will not be easy to make up that single point they need.
The Colorado Avalanche meanwhile sit 4 points back. Five of the 17 teams overcame a deficit equal or greater to that amount, but few did it from further behind.
On January 1st they were sitting 9 points back, only two spots ahead of last place Edmonton.
They made up 5 points in a month thanks to a 6-3-3 record during that span.
Of the 33 games the Avalanche have left, 6 are against the Jets, Flames, Sharks or Canucks, while 17 are against teams currently slotted to make the NHL playoffs.
The challenge here is that the Avalanche also have to contend with the Kings, who are three points up on them. They play LA three times from here until the end of the season.
As for the Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild, they face the toughest climb of all.
Not only are they 6 and 7 points away from the final post-season spot, but they also need to leapfrog both the Kings and Avalanche if they hope to beat the odds and make it to the second season.
Both teams have 35 games remaining.
The Stars have to play teams they’re chasing (including the Kings and Avalanche) a total of 10 times, with 23 games against playoff teams.
The Wild meanwhile face-off against other teams chasing the final few spots in the NHL Playoffs on 12 occasions. 22 of their 35 remaining games are against currently playoff-bound clubs.
While the NHL would love to have us believe that there is a ton of parity this year, the reality is that there are very few teams vying to make it to the big dance.
Playoff races are a thing of the past and it really detracts from the drama of the final few weeks of the NHL season.
The silver lining is that if more teams recognize that the likelihood of their participation in this year’s NHL playoffs is remote, we could have a much more intriguing trade deadline than in recent memory.
But I’d rather see playoff races rather than the proverbial arms races.