Honeycomb Headlines

The race to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs has finally begun for the teams amongst the NHL’s 4 divisions. Few have already punched their ticket into the playoffs and a handful have already booked their own private flights to Cancun where they can relax and watch the playoffs unfold. Every single division has a close wild card race, especially the Metropolitan Division and the Pacific division whereas the Atlantic and Central divisions are still close races but the gaps are just a bit bigger between the teams holding the Wild Card spot and the Bubble team trying to steal it.  

The East and the Western conferences have already seen their fair share of eliminated teams with most of them being playoff teams and top teams in the league from just last season. Most notably the Back-to-Back champs in the Florida Panthers have gone from first in the last two seasons to amongst the worst in the league at a staggering .500 record of 37-37-3. Other playoff teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs who made it to the second round last year, and the New Jersey Devils who had a premature playoff exit have already been eliminated from contention of making the playoffs in general. The New York Rangers have also been eliminated due to a conference worse 33-36-9 record through the regular season so far, despite finding success two years ago in making the conference championship they have been slowly declining over the last 2 years. 

Moving to the west brings us the 3 worst teams in the league record wise and their seasons this year have ended all the same as they did the last 2 years. The Vancouver Canucks have fallen to the very bottom of the NHL barrel with a staggering 22-47-8 record just 2 years removed from their 2nd round run in the 2024 playoffs and just barely missing the playoffs last year. Another team who was oh so close last year is the Calgary Flames who missed the playoffs due to losing the regular season tiebreaker to the St. Louis Blues, this will be the Flames’ 4th playoffs missed in 4 years sending the team home to question what they will do differently next year. Finally the Chicago Blackhawks who have the young star in Connor Bedard have missed the playoffs for the 9th straight season and yet again are the second worst team in the league whilst also sitting at the very bottom of the central division. 

Moving back to the East and into brighter spirits there has also been a bunch of teams who have already punched their ticket into the Stanley Cup Playoffs and will get a chance to play all the way through April and May and part way into June. Amongst the teams who have clinched only 1 of them have clinched their spot at the top of their conference and that is the very dominant Carloina Hurricanes who had a 50-22-6 record and the 2nd best team in the league. The Atlantic division is still wide open though as the top three teams of the Tampa Bay Lightning, Buffalo Sabres and Montreal Canadiens have all clinched the playoffs but none are yet to clinch the division itself. 

In the west lies the most dominant team in the league through the season thus far and they reside in the great state of Colorado. The Avalanche have been on absolute fire ever since the season started, so much so that they have already clinched the 1 seed in the entirety of the Western Conference with just around 5 games to play. They have a staggering 8 point lead over the second place team of the Dallas Stars who have also clinched along with the 3rd place team who isn’t far behind and that is the Minnesota Wild. All three of these teams have star studded rosters with talent all around the board, In Minnesota they have Matt Boldy, Kirill Kaprizov, and Quinn Hughes along with their talented goalie duo of Filip Gustavsson and Jesper Wallstedt. Meanwhile the Avs have a hold of the Goal Scoring Leader in the entire NHL of Nathan MacKinnon, and the Dallas Stars have Jamie Benn, Jake Oettinger and Mikko Rantanen. 

The bubble watch is also proving to be a very eventful thing to pay attention to late in this season as multiple teams still have a very good chance of both dropping out of playoff contention and jumping up into it. The current Wild Card spot holders in both the East and the West are the Boston Bruins and Utah Mammoth in the WC1 spot and the Ottawa Senators and Nashville Predators in the WC2 spot. The 6 teams in the chase for a Wild Card spot in the east are all only separated by 9 points with the Bruins sitting atop with 96 points and the Washington Capitals rounding out the bottom with 87 points, the New York Islanders, Detroit Red Wings, and Columbus Blue Jackets are all still in the hunt but are all running out of time fast. In the west the 7 teams in the hunt are separated by 13 points with the Seattle Kraken sitting at the bottom with 75 and the Utah Mammoth atop the mountain at 88 points. Previously irrelevant teams like the San Jose Sharks, Winnipeg Jets, St. Louis Blues, and Los Angeles Kings are all fighting for their lives to take those top 2 spots away from Utah and the Pred’s. This will all come to a peak when the season ends on Thursday of next week where playoffs implication will be heavy throughout the entire week.