Teams had crossed the 65-game mark in the past week and are roaring towards 70 games in the 2025-26 NHL season. It’s moving fast now as the league crunches in games to catch up from the Olympic pause. In the Eastern Conference, a high-stakes game something akin to musical chairs is developing for playoff spots. Five teams are separated by two points as of today, fighting for just four playoff spots.
At the top of the conference, Carolina, Buffalo (!!), Tampa and (for now) Montreal are above the fray due to the points they have. The race at the bottom is truly on. The Ottawa Senators are lingering back and trying to catch up, which they may well accomplish in the next few weeks, but for now the allure has been the race between the Columbus Blue Jackets trying to catch a Wild Card team from the Atlantic (Boston and Detroit), if not a Metropolitan Team in Pittsburgh or the NY Islanders.
The Blue Jackets are making progress, having gone 5-0-4 in their last nine games, including completing a 2-0-1 road trip this week. On the other side, Detroit is fading away having only won one of their last six games (1-3-2).
The Penguins, for their part, have mostly been in a ‘hang on and survive’ mode lately, attempting to weather injury to Sidney Crosby, suspension to Evgeni Malkin and a nasty-strong March schedule that would be enough to make any team pause. The results have been uneven, but the worst could be behind them — Malkin is set to be back for the next game, Crosby won’t be that far behind him, and they’ve almost made it to what could be a place to clean up in April, where the Penguins end the season with six-straight games against non-playoff opponents who could all be sputtering to the finish line in the meaningless final games of their season (Florida x2, New Jersey, Washington x2, St. Louis).
The other bit of good news for the Pens — their 28 regulation wins put them in a very strong situation for the first tiebreaker against the teams they are directly competing with for a playoff spot. Boston (27) is close, all the other teams in the mix (Detroit 25, NYI 24, Columbus 23) are some level of overtime/shootout merchants that haven’t won consistently in regulation as much as Pittsburgh has. If the standings come down to a tie at the end of the year, the first tiebreaker is looking favorable for Pittsburgh, which essentially means a tie is as good as a lead right now for the Pens. These other teams are going to have to move past them, if it comes to that, by putting up more points, not just catch up to the same number as them.
For now, the race goes on. Five teams vying for four places when the music stops. Things may be trending up in Columbus, down in Detroit and sideways in Pittsburgh at the moment, but the moment will pass and the next twist in the story could be coming down the pike. Whatever trends up is sure to pull back to the pack and whatever lagging behind (hello again, Ottawa?) could draw back closer as the schedule moves on.
These teams have going on 15 games left to figure out who will get into the postseason dance and who will be the disappointed one still standing when the music stop. As always, there are more playoff hopefuls than there are spots available. The East has some quality teams with Carolina, Tampa and Buffalo playing very well this season, yet the depth in the mid-levels has been impressive as well. 70 points is good enough for a playoff spot today in the Western Conference, 70 points in the East gets a team 13th place. The East has been surprisingly strong and is tracking towards team needing 95+ points to qualify for the playoffs, with the emphasis possibly on the “+” given how few regulation losses we’re seeing out of the teams in the chase lately.