NHL playoff race update (Vol. 1): What your team needs to do

It is not too early to start looking at the standings. This is your October NHL playoff race update.

Every year I will do a couple of periodic looks at the NHL’s standings and playoff race and highlight what your team needs to do the rest of the way to make the playoffs. I decided this season I am going to do it for every month of the season. Now that the October schedule is completely in the books and every team has played at least 10 games (and some have already played as many 14 games) it is time for our first look at the playoff races.

While this might seem like it is too early, I can assure you it is probably not too early.

While you can not necessarily make the playoffs in October, you can definitely miss them if you put yourself in too far of a hole with a slow or bad start. It is hard to make up points as the season goes on, and there is a reason the standings stay largely the same after the calendar rolls over to December every season.

The good news if you are a fan of an Eastern Conference team is that pretty much everybody has avoided the type of start that could derail a potential playoff appearance. Nobody has been totally awful.

In fact, every team in the Eastern Conference enters Monday with a points percentage of .500 or better, and only team (Boston) has a points points percentage lower than .538.

There is a razor thin line between the top teams and the bottom teams.

Let’s go to the table, highlighting where each currently is, how many games they have remaining, and what they need to do in those games reach the usual playoff line of 95 points.

Why 95 points? Generally speaking that is a safe number to target when it comes to simply earning a playoff spot. In the salary cap era teams that have reached 95 points in the standings make the playoffs 97 percent of the time (234 out of 241). If you get there, you’re probably getting in, and if you don’t, you just have to chalk it up to some bad luck and a poorly timed season.

Sometimes the playoff cut-off is lower, as it has been in the Eastern Conference the past three years where only 91 and 92 points have been needed.

Either way, 95 points is generally a safe goal.

As the season goes along further and a more objective cut-off line starts to emerge, we will include what it takes to reach THAT level. In this update, however, we are only looking at 95 points.

NHL Eastern Conference playoff picture through October

Honestly, I think this is probably what most hockey fans would expect through the first month of the season — everybody still “in it” even if some rosters are flawed, or if the actual on-ice play is not consistently good for individual teams.

Literally every team in the Eastern Conference has been fine so far. There is not one truly bad start here.

Nobody should be ordering their playoff tickets yet.

Nobody should be giving up on the possibility of it.

The biggest team that stands out to me, however, is Detroit. This is the best start of the Steve Yzerman era by a wide margin, and also the best start they have had through 13 games in every year of their ongoing playoff drought.

Is this the year they finally see real progress?

If there is one team that should be concerned it is probably Boston. Not only have they played more games than anybody else in the Eastern Conference, and not only do they have the lowest points percentage in the conference, but there is little in their play to suggest they are going to turn things around anytime soon.

Their 5-on-5 expected goals share 44.6 is the lowest in the Conference and the fourth-worst in the NHL.

Their defensive play has been bad.

Their big-money goalie, Jeremy Swayman, has been awful and not yet bounced back from his awful 2024-25 season.

If anybody in the East is in trouble, it is that team.

Now let’s look at the Western Conference, where the are a couple of teams that have already given themselves a tall mountain to climb.

It is a little more chaotic over there already.

NHL Western Conference playoff picture through October