Around the NHL, four teams have clinched a playoff berth. In the West Division, the Vegas Golden Knights, Colorado Avalanche, and Minnesota Wild have all solidified their spot in the postseason, as have the Carolina Hurricanes in the Central Division.
In the all-Canadian North Division, however, everything is still up in the air. Technically speaking, there’s a scenario where even the division-leading Toronto Maple Leafs could suffer a catastrophic collapse and miss the playoffs entirely.
The Vancouver Canucks are the reason.
With 14 games still left to play in their season, more than any other team in the NHL, the Canucks could technically overtake each team ahead of them in different scenarios. If the Canucks win all 14 of those games, they’ll finish the season with a very nice 69 points, which would land them ahead of Toronto as long as the Leafs only win one of their final eight games.
Is that likely to happen? Absolutely not. But is it technically a possibility? Yes.
Five games in hand
There is a slightly-less farfetched path to the playoffs for the Canucks than a 14-game winning streak, however. All they have to do is win five more games than the Montreal Canadiens — along with one or two other things going right. Conveniently, the Canucks also have five games in hand on the Canadiens, so they have five extra games to pick up those five wins.
It’s all because the Canadiens, who seemed to be cruising to the playoffs, tripped and fell flat on their face over the last month. They’ve lost eight of their last twelve games, landing them within sight of the Canucks.
They also have a couple of key injuries, with Brendan Gallagher out with a fractured thumb, Paul Byron gone with a lower-body injury, and Carey Price out with a concussion. It certainly seems like they could have a tough time closing out the season.
The Canadiens currently have 51 points, ten points up on the Canucks. With nine games remaining, the most points they can earn is 69, the same theoretical maximum as the Canucks. The catch is that the Canadiens have six more wins in regulation than the Canucks, which is the first tiebreaker. That means, all other things being equal, the Canucks would still miss the playoffs if they added five more regulation wins.
So, here’s the scenario: the Canucks either need six more wins than the Canadiens over the remainder of the season or five more wins and either an extra overtime loss or some combination of results that give them more regulation wins.
I need an example
Let’s lay this out with an example. The Canadiens have a points percentage of .543, meaning they’ve earned 54.3% of the available points so far this season. Let’s assume they continue along those lines and earn ten more points out of their nine remaining games. That could mean five wins — a 5-4-0 record — or some combination of wins and overtime losses, such as 4-3-2.
Let’s use the latter. We’ll assume that the Canucks have the same record in their remaining 14 games, except with five extra wins: 9-3-2. That brings the Canadiens up to 61 points on the season and the Canucks to the same points. What matters then is how many of the Canadiens and Canucks wins were in regulation.
If, for example, two of the Canadiens’ four wins were in regulation and two in overtime or the shootout, that would give them 21 regulation wins on the season. If all nine of the Canucks wins were in regulation, they would have 22, giving them the tiebreaker. If only eight of them were regulation wins, the two teams would tie and the tiebreaker would move to regulation and overtime wins.
Alternatively, the Canucks could post a 9-2-3 record, pushing one more of their five losses to overtime. That would give them 62 points on the season, one ahead of the Canadiens.
A brutal schedule
Certainly, this all seemed a little more likely before the Canucks dropped two games to the basement-dwelling Ottawa Senators.
This was the easy part of the Canucks schedule after returning to play. For the rest of the season, they’ll be playing tougher teams and every single game will be either their third game in four nights or third game in five nights.
Then there’s the lingering question of fatigue considering almost the entire team is coming off dealing with COVID-19, though some were certainly hit harder than others. Expecting this team to do anything more than just survive this last stretch of the season seems like too much to ask.
That’s not the mentality of the players in the room, however.
“This time of year, you’re always kind of keeping an eye on what’s going on around the league and seeing where the standings are,” said Brandon Sutter after Monday’s tough loss to the Senators. “We’re still in the fight.”
“Every game is a must-win,” said Tanner Pearson. “We have games in hand, which could be the key for us.”
When asked about people not expecting much out of the Canucks after their COVID-19 outbreak and not giving them much of a chance to win games, Bo Horvat didn’t mince words.
“When you hear that kind of stuff, it just fuels the fire and makes you want to prove people wrong,” he said. “We’re gonna give ourselves a chance to win every single night.”
The players know it’s possible for them to make the playoffs with an odds-defying run to end the season, so they believe that they can and will get it done. And why not? More absurd things have happened in sports.
The Los Angeles Kings pulled off a comeback from 5-0 down to the Edmonton Oilers in the Miracle on Manchester. Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson. Greg Lemond made up a 50-second deficit in the final time trial to win the 1989 Tour De France just a few years after getting shot in the back with a shotgun in a hunting accident and nearly dying. As the narrator says in Magnolia, “Strange things happen all the time.”
So, the Canucks will keep believing they can make the playoffs and the more optimistic of their fans will do the same, until the math makes it impossible.
