The NHL is back in action Wednesday night. And in the Eastern and Western Conferences, the battle for a wild-card position will be fierce. Here's what that means for the next week and beyond.
Buckle up as the NHL returns to action after the Olympics on Wednesday.
Right off the hop, there will be an intense battle to lock up a Stanley Cup playoff berth. And the fiercest fights will take place between teams vying for a wild-card position in both conferences.
In the Eastern Conference, only eight points – just four wins – separate the 14th-place Florida Panthers from the team in the second wild-card spot, the Boston Bruins.
The Panthers, Philadelphia Flyers, Toronto Maple Leafs, Ottawa Senators, Washington Capitals and Columbus Blue Jackets are all within a few wins of the Bruins, and Columbus and Philadelphia each have a game in hand on Boston.
The Buffalo Sabres, which sit in the first wild-card spot, are only one point ahead of the Bruins.
Out of those teams, only the Flyers and Bruins are in a position where you can argue they're not necessarily a win-now team the way the Sabres, Leafs, Sens, Caps, Blue Jackets and Panthers are, for different reasons.
The reality is that, barring a collapse of a top-three team in either the Atlantic or Metropolitan Division, there will be multiple teams that take a step backward this season.
Florida would take the most significant step backward if the Panthers miss out, considering they would be the sixth team in NHL history to miss the playoffs one year after winning the Stanley Cup. But the Leafs, Senators and Capitals would miss out after making last year's playoffs, and none of them have any plans of retooling.
There's no shortage of squads battling it out for two wild-card spots in the Western Conference, either.
As it stands in the West, only six points separate the 11th-place San Jose Sharks from the fifth-place Utah Mammoth.
Because the Pacific Division is so far behind the Central Division, the Mammoth actually sit in the first wild-card spot, while the Edmonton Oilers, which have the same number of points as Utah with one more game played, rank second in the Pacific.
The Seattle Kraken rank third in the Pacific despite being seventh in the West, while the Mammoth and Anaheim Ducks occupy the wild-card spots.
Then there are the Los Angeles Kings and Nashville Predators, which are three and four points behind the Ducks, respectively. So all these squads between the Sharks and Mammoth have a reasonable shot at making the playoffs, and San Jose even has at least one game in hand on all the squads above them.
To call this a cramped playoff picture in the West would be an understatement.
What Does The Logjam In Both Conferences Mean?
We're looking at many teams that should be buyers by or before this year's March 6 NHL trade deadline.
In just over one week, each of these teams will have to decide whether to make a playoff push with its current roster or change things up with a veteran addition or two.
While some teams have more salary cap flexibility than others, in the right circumstance, even teams tight to the cap ceiling can find ways to get trades done. Just look at the Oilers, which are trying to move Andrew Mangiapane's contract so they can make another trade.
But between now and then, nearly half of the NHL will be in must-win scenarios to either take a wild-card spot, get into a top-three spot in the division or hang onto their position. So, just to keep in the playoff conversation, teams must win consistently from now through the end of the regular season.
Most teams have about 25 games left to play. And nothing short of a ferocious performance will prevent them from being out of the playoff picture by season's end. At a time in league history when parity almost always gives a team a chance to win any game they play, the teams we've mentioned on this list face a considerable challenge.
That challenge begins on Wednesday and lasts for about seven weeks.
There's no time for rest and reflection if these teams all want to make the playoffs. Teams have to meet the task before them with confidence and determination, before and after the trade deadline, and let the chips fall where they may.
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