American Thanksgiving is always a key benchmark in the NHL season. About 75 percent of teams in a playoff spot on that date end up qualifying come the spring. Still, that doesn’t mean your team is out of it if they find themselves outside the top eight in their conference.
Twenty-five percent of teams bucking the trend and making the playoffs might not seem like great odds, but a one-and-four chance of making the postseason means it’s definitely possible. Let’s look at the bubble in each conference and see who has the best chance of getting back into the playoffs.
Eastern Bubble Picture a Bit Surprising
The Eastern Conference playoff picture looks different than many of us were expecting heading into this point of the season. The Philadelphia Flyers are in sixth place, the Washington Capitals are in seventh, and the Carolina Hurricanes occupy the final spot in eighth place.
That leaves the New Jersey Devils, Detroit Red Wings, Pittsburgh Penguins, Buffalo Sabres and Ottawa Senators on the outside looking in. Here’s how the standings look:
- Flyers: 10-7-1, 21 points (6th)
- Capitals: 9-4-2, 20 points (7th)
- Hurricanes: 10-7-0, 20 points (8th)
- Red Wings: 8-6-3, 19 points (9th)
- Penguins: 9-8-0, 18 points (10th)
- Devils: 8-7-1, 17 points (11th)
- New York Islanders: 6-6-5, 17 points (12th)
- Sabres: 8-9-1, 17 points (13th)
- Senators: 8-7-0, 16 points (14th)
As you can see, there isn’t much of a gap between the Flyers and the Senators. The loser point makes it more difficult to make up ground, but a five-point gap between the sixth and 14th-place teams isn’t much this early in the season.
Some teams are in better positions than others, though. The Islanders may be just three points behind the Hurricanes for eighth place, but they’re trending downward. They lack scoring and have an expected goals share (xG%) of 48.74 percent. Money Puck has their playoff odds at just 9.7 percent, so things aren’t looking great on Long Island.
The same is true for the Sabres and Senators. Both teams have struggled at five-on-five, especially the Senators, whose xG% ranks in the bottom five of the NHL. Money Puck has their playoff odds at just 15.1 percent, so it might be another year without postseason play in Ottawa.
Even the Flyers and Capitals, who sit in playoff spots as of this writing, are below 50 percent to make the postseason on Money Puck. The Flyers are riding a five-game winning streak after beginning the season 5-7-1, but can it last? To be honest, it…
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