Explore NHL.com’s Coverage of the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026<\/a><\/p>\nAnother example: The Seattle Kraken were in third place in the Pacific Division on Monday. The next day, they slipped to the second wild card into the playoffs from the Western Conference. The day after that, they were out of the playoff picture.<\/p>\n
They played one game in that time, a 4-2 loss to Detroit on Tuesday. But entering their game at the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday (8 p.m. ET; KHN\/Prime, CHSN, KONG), they\u2019re one point out of a playoff spot and four points out of first in the Pacific.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s demanding,\u201d Seattle coach Lane Lambert said. \u201cIt\u2019s fun, because every game has an extreme significance, and aside from maybe one or two teams, there\u2019s nobody that\u2019s really separating themselves right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Colorado Avalanche lead the NHL standings by three points. The next 13 teams are separated by four points.<\/p>\n
In the Eastern Conference, the Carolina Hurricanes have a one-point lead over the New Jersey Devils. The top six teams are within four points. Four points separate fourth place from 15th. Entering Wednesday, nine points separated all 16 teams. This was the first time an entire conference had been this close at that stage of an 82-game season, according to NHL Stats.<\/p>\n
In the Western Conference, the Avalanche lead the conference by four points. The next nine teams are separated by four points.
In the Atlantic and Metropolitan divisions, there is a seven-point difference from top to bottom. The Avalanche lead the Central by four points, but four points separate the next five teams. The Anaheim Ducks lead the Pacific by three points, but three points separate the next five teams.<\/p>\n
Crazy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I\u2019ve used that word here over the last week, just how tight it is,\u201d said Lambert, who played in the NHL from 1983-89 and has been an assistant, associate or head coach in the League since 2011-12. \u201cI think it\u2019s probably the tightest I\u2019ve seen at this juncture in my whole time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT — The Detroit Red Wings didn\u2019t hold a spot in the Stanley Cup Playoffs on Saturday. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-295646","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}