Teams Cannot Afford to Fall Behind in New NHL

It is still very early in the NHL regular season, but teams that are falling behind now are quickly putting themselves out of playoff contention.  With the parody in the league these days and the extra overtime/shootout points teams that fall behind early in the season really put themselves up against the wall in terms of coming from behind and grabbing a playoff spot.  I saw it last year with my Ottawa Senators.  The Sens started off slow and then they were fighting a losing battle all year long.  Even a huge three week span to start March where the Sens earned 18 of a possible 22 points didn’t event put the Senators within a reasonable striking distance of a playoff birth.  I’m writing this article because I keep hearing fans of teams low in the standings talking about how their team has a legitimate shot at the playoffs.  It’s getting to that time of year where teams are already finding themselves out of the hunt.

Take the Toronto Maple Leafs for example.  Leaf fans are the worst.  Most of them probably still think their team is going to win the Stanley Cup this year.  The will say things like, “we are just 7 points out of the playoffs.  That’s just four wins.”  But the truth is that’s four wins for the Leafs, four losses for the 8th place team, three losses for the ninth, tenth and eleventh place teams, and two losses for the 12th placed team.  That equals out to 19 games having to go as planned, and a lot of the time that’s just not possible because these teams that have to lose will likely be playing each other.  Not to mention that these losses have to be in regulation.  The extra point makes it even more difficult for teams to come from behind to make playoffs because even when teams ahead of them are losing they will still be receiving a single point many of these times.

Let’s look at this logically.  I think even fans making these outrageous NHL predictions in favour of their favourite team can agree that a playoff team needs 90 points at an absolute minimum.  The average of the two 8th placed teams last season was 92 so we will use that number to make our following calculations.  The Maple Leafs currently have 25 points in 29 games.  This means that they need to earn, at an absolute minimum, 67 points in their remaining 53 games.  That is an average of 1.265 points per game.  So far this season, only the top 6 teams in the league have a point % greater than 1.265.  To put it into perspective at an absolute minimum, the Leafs would have to win about 31 of their last 53 games, lose 17 in regulation and lose 5 in OT/SO.  Does anyone really think the Maple Leafs can be a top 6 NHL team for the last two-thirds of the season?  I certainly don’t.

Once a team falls behind in this new NHL where the teams are all very equal and many games award the loser a point it is very difficult to make up any ground.  The games at this time of year are extremely important, so if your team is starting to fall off the pace, I advise you to treat every game like it’s the playoffs and watch it intently.