What your team needs to do to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs

Putting a number on what you need to see from your team in the second half of the 2024-25 NHL season.

Now that we are officially into the 2025 portion of the 2024-25 NHL season, and now that teams are hitting the official halfway point of the season, it is time for my annual mid-season look at what every team needs to realistically do the rest of the way in terms of points to qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Some teams are facing significant uphill battles.

Some teams are in a great spot with a massive cushion built in for the second half.

Some teams are already out of it.

There is also a pretty dramatic difference between the Eastern Conference and Western Conference on what the cut-off point might be.

Let’s talk about it.

We start with the Eastern Conference.

Based on points percentage, the Ottawa Senators (.526) are the second Wild Card team and the cut-off point for a playoff spot. That is an 86-point pace. So let’s set the current cut-off point at 87 points in order for a team to finish ahead of their pace.

Because an 86-87 point cut-off pace seems a little low, and because I imagine that floor might rise a little in the second half (the second Wild Card team during the 2023-24 NHL season was the Washington Capitals with 91 points), I am also going to include a 95-point target in the table below as well as the points percentage each team would need to achieve in their remaining games to reach those numbers. Getting to the 95-point mark is typically a nearly guaranteed playoff spot.

In the salary cap era (since the start of the 2005-06 season when the NHL introduced the three-point game) teams that have reached 95 points have made the playoffs more than 97 percent of the time (220 out of 226 instances). Of the six teams that missed, only two of them have happened in the past decade. If you get to 95 points you are probably getting in the playoffs. Sometimes it simply takes less than that.

The table is sorted by current points percentage and current points pace for an 82-game season.

The numbers:

The Washington Capitals, Toronto Maple Leafs, Florida Panthers, Carolina Hurricanes and New Jersey Devils should be in pretty good shape. They could all play losing hockey the rest of the way and still reach the current 87-point cut-off. They also do not even need to maintain their current paces to reach the 95-point mark. Washington could actually play losing hockey the rest of the way (20-23-0) and still get to 95 points. Toronto could play .500 hockey the rest of the way and still get there. They should be good.

Tampa Bay is right on the line between secure and “work to do.” Even then, if the Lightning simply maintain their current pace from the first half, they are in.

That leaves two spots — likely the Wild Card spots — for the rest of the conference.

By points percentage the Boston Bruins and Ottawa Senators are occupying those spots (Boston has more points than Tampa Bay right now, but has done so in FIVE more games).

The Pittsburgh Penguins, Columbus Blue Jackets and Montreal Canadiens are the teams closest on the bubble, with all of them owning a .500 points percentage as of Monday, with the Penguins having the fewest games remaining. That slightly raises their needed points percentage the rest of the way.

To get to 87 points they would need a .561 points percentage the rest of the way, and to get to the 95-point “safe” line they would need a .659 points percentage the rest of the way. In other words, they would need to be as good in the second half as the Toronto Maple Leafs were in the first half.

That is a BIG ask.

It is a similar story for both Columbus and Montreal.

Basically those teams either need to have outstanding second half performances, or hope the bottom of the playoff race remains a pile of mediocrity and keeps the playoff floor lower.

Below them you have the Philadelphia Flyers, Detroit Red Wings and New York Rangers.

All three of them would need a .570 mark (or better) the rest of the way just to get to the 87-point level, after all of them played at a .490 mark or worse in the first half.

How much faith do you have in any of them doing that?

The Flyers seem to at least have a long-term direction, and they do a lot of things well, but their goaltending situation will be their undoing.

The Red Wings are currently getting the “new coach boost” under Todd McLellan and have won some games over the past week or so, but there it becomes a question of sustainability.

The Rangers are going to be the fascinating one here. In theory, and based on the roster on paper, they should be capable of doing what they need to do to get back in this thing. Especially if starting goalie Igor Shesterkin can put the team on his back again when he returns to the lineup. He has done it so many times over the years it is not a stretch to think he can do it again. They might need him to if they are going to make the playoffs.

Even with that, the Rangers still have all of the same flaws they have had the past couple of years in terms of their defensive zone play and overall 5-on-5 play, and this year they do not have the power play and goaltending to help bail them out. It is getting late early for them. At some point management is going to have to figure out if they are still in it this season if they do not turn it around quickly.

The New York Islanders are in a similar spot just behind the Rangers, and while they do have the goaltending to possibly help turn their season around, I am not sure they have the overall talent the Rangers do to seriously get back into it.

The only team in the East that I would confidently say is completely out of it is, once again, the Buffalo Sabres. Just a staggering failure of a season and another failure of a rebuild. They are going on 14 consecutive seasons without the playoffs, and they are not even close to them. Almost impossible to consider in a league where half of the teams make the playoffs every season.

Now on to the Western Conference.