NHL playoff race update (Vol. 2): What your team needs to do

Looking at the NHL playoff races as we enter December. Some distance is starting to set in.

It is a pretty widely held belief that American Thanksgiving is one of the big measuring stick dates on the NHL calendar for the playoff races. Generally speaking, teams that are in a playoff position on that day have a roughly 75 percent chance of making the playoffs that season. That means, on average, only about three or four teams are going to change over the next few months, and they are probably going to be teams right on the fringes of a playoff spot right now.

As the season progresses, it simply gets more and more difficult to make up points in the standings.

Like we said back at the start of November — you might not be able to make the playoffs in the first month of the season, but you can certainly miss them.

That becomes even more true as we get through the month of November.

So now that the calendar has rolled over to December, it is time to take an updated monthly look at the NHL playoff standings.

Just as a refresher from the first update: We are looking at each team’s current points pace, and what they need to do over their remaining games to meet the current playoff cut line, as well as the 95-point line. The 95-point line is typically a guaranteed playoff spot.

We start with the Eastern Conference where things look really bunched up if you simply look at the raw point totals. But this is why it is important to use points percentage when looking at early-and mid-season standings. Teams have not always played an equal number of games, and the raw point totals can give a little bit of a misleading look at things.

Here are the current standings in the Eastern Conference, sorted by points percentage and current points pace over the full 82-game season.

The current playoff cut-line in the Eastern Conference would be 92 points based on current points percentages and current team paces.

A lot of teams are still very much in it, but when you get below Detroit it is really starting to get very late, very early for the bottom-four teams in the standings.

Florida’s biggest issue is the injuries to Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk, and I know they still have a good roster that does a lot of things well, but they are starting to get themselves into a pretty decent-sized hole.

Will Tkachuk’s return be enough to dig out of that?

The Rangers and Maple Leafs are also facing long climbs and would need to play at nearly 100-point paces the rest of the way to reach the 95-point mark. Have they done anything this season to show they are capable of that? The Rangers are dealing with another issue right now with the temporary absence of top defenseman Adam Fox. They do not have the defensive depth (or the top-end defensive players) to sustain that sort of loss in that group.

Buffalo’s playoff drought looks like it is going to continue for an incomprehensible 15th consecutive season. The Sabres are the only team in the Eastern Conference with a points percentage below .500 for the season. Stunning incompetence with that organization.

Let’s talk about the rest of the Eastern Conference, and all of the Western Conference.