For years, most NHL teams in playoff position at American Thanksgiving make the post-season. But 2023-24 could be more volatile, writes Carol Schram.

Gobble gobble.

For hockey fans, U.S. Thanksgiving doesn't mean gathering with family, gorging on turkey or watching football as much as it marks the first significant indicator of how the NHL's 2024 playoff race could shake out.

For the nearly two decades since the salary cap was instituted, more than three-quarters of the teams that reach the post-season are already in playoff position by the second-last week in November.

Pre-pandemic, the average was just over 77 percent, per HockeyStatMiner on X (formerly known as Twitter):

Over the last two seasons, the NHL has bumped back the beginning of its regular season by nearly a week from its old opening date in the first week of October. Even though slightly fewer games are completed by Thanksgiving, the prognostication tool is still working.

When the schedule returned to normal in 2021-22, twelve of the 16 Thanksgiving teams in playoff positions, based on points percentage, made it to the dance. That's 75 percent.

There was just one change in the Eastern Conference: the Pittsburgh Penguins swapped places with the Columbus Blue Jackets. In the West, the Los Angeles Kings, Dallas Stars and Nashville Predators replaced the Vegas Golden Knights, Winnipeg Jets and Anaheim Ducks. 

Last year, the Thanksgiving marker was even more prophetic. Thirteen of 16 teams went through — or 81.25 percent.

In the East, the Florida Panthers swapped spots with the Detroit Red Wings. In the West, the Calgary Flames and St. Louis Blues were bumped out by the Edmonton Oilers and Minnesota Wild — although the Wild and Blues had an identical 20 points in 19 games, and St. Louis held the second wild-card spot only by virtue of the tiebreaker.

A couple of other points to consider as we look ahead to what might happen next spring...

First: Was last season even more locked-in than usual because a bunch of teams opted to pursue the best possible position in an ultra-deep draft rather than try to squeeze into the post-season? 

Second: Last spring, the Panthers proved that, yes, anything can happen when you're an eighth seed. After their success, will we see more teams push to the bitter end this year rather than cutting bait and selling off assets at the trade deadline? If so, that could create more volatility in the standings during the final weeks of the regular season.

For the record, here are the 16 teams with the edge following the conclusion of Wednesday's games. Again, all rankings are based on points percentage to help account for differences in the number of games played.

Eastern Conference

Atlantic Division

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Metropolitan Division

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Eastern Wild Card

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Western Conference

Central Division

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Pacific Division

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Western Wild Card

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Both Cup winners within the last five years, the Capitals and the Blues are currently poised to return to the post-season after one-year absences, while the Red Wings and Canucks would end longer playoff droughts.

Vancouver reached the second round of the 2020 bubble in Edmonton but hasn't played a home post-season game since 2015. Detroit's streak of 25 straight appearances was snuffed in 2017.

While the Canucks were on a few experts' lists as a potential playoff team this year, they've exceeded expectations by hovering near the top of the league standings, with potential awards contenders at virtually every position. Detroit is now in the fifth year of its rebuild under Steve Yzerman.

Maybe they'll follow in the footsteps of last year's New Jersey Devils and Seattle Kraken and maintain that success. Or maybe they'll dip as the road ahead gets tougher. 

Speaking of the Devils and the Kraken — Seattle snuck into the second wild-card spot in the west on Wednesday night thanks to a 7-1 win over the San Jose Sharks. They have 10 points in their last eight games and look like they've corrected from a tough start, with Joey Daccord starting to shine in net. 

And while New Jersey remains four points out in the East, the team has had a tough go with injuries. The Devils went 2-3-0 while Jack Hughes was sidelined with his shoulder ailment and have lost both games since his return. But captain Nico Hischier has now missed 10 games with his own upper-body issue, and Timo Meier has missed three games with a lower-body concern. 

New Jersey doesn't have strong enough goaltending to withstand these types of losses up front. But if the Devils get healthy again — watch out.

Interestingly, the playoff odds at moneypuck.com told a different story heading into Wednesday's games from the current standings. The site was still bullish on New Jersey and Pittsburgh (three points out at .550 and also dealing with injury issues) with better than a 70-percent chance to make the dance. MoneyPuck also had the woeful Edmonton Oilers in the top 16.

That's changed slightly after Wednesday's matchups. The Penguins are at a 64.5-percent chance to make the playoffs in MoneyPuck's prediction model, while the Devils are at 60.5 percent now, and the Oilers dropped to the 19th-best odds. 

After their big win, the Seattle Kraken jumped up to a 55.2-percent shot at the post-season from 39.9 percent. But MoneyPuck's elaborate algorithm still doesn't have a lot of faith in Detroit (34.3 percent) or Washington (27.9 percent). Winnipeg might be more of a lock than you'd expect at 87.1 percent.

Edmonton, of course, is the most interesting case of the year — a squad that features two of the best players in the game, that has won three playoff series in the last two years and that was built to win in 2024. 

After a 6-3 loss in Raleigh on Wednesday, the Oilers have now lost three in a row under new coach Kris Knoblauch and sit 30th in the league standings with 11 points. 

They're already a whopping 10 points out of a wild-card spot in the West — and while the 2018-19 St. Louis Blues showed us a team doesn't have to start winning until after Christmas to climb back into playoff contention and go on a run, the structure of the NHL schedule means Connor McDavid and company would have to pull together another epic winning streak in order to play themselves back into the mix.

The Oilers changed coaches because failure was not an option this season. Other teams have similar thoughts: despite their salary cap limitations, as a couple of examples, Bill Guerin did his best to fire a shot across the bow with the Minnesota Wild before their trip to Sweden, and the New York Islanders are keeping close to the playoff bar as they strive to avoid a lost year.

After the Panthers' playoff success last season, don't be surprised to see more teams doing whatever it takes to keep themselves in the playoff mix. 

Now, we wait to see whether that leads to more volatility than usual as playoff spots are affirmed in April.