Most NHL players claim they avoid looking at the standings, but there’s one trope they have begrudgingly memorized: the standings are largely set by American Thanksgiving.
“I know that’s usually the indicator: 80% of the teams that are in usually make the playoffs,” Blackhawks defenseman Matt Grzelcyk said Wednesday.
Grzelcyk’s guess was pretty close. Since 2005, 77.1% of teams in playoff position on Thanksgiving have wound up qualifying in April (per ESPN), which is significant. Current Kings general manager Ken Holland is credited with first proposing the theory decades ago, and it stuck.
This season, however, the Thanksgiving rule doesn’t seem particularly relevant. The NHL is witnessing a degree of parity not seen in a long time, and it has rendered the standings less meaningful than usual. Most teams are still clustered too tightly to be differentiated.
In the Eastern Conference, the first-place Devils (with 31 points) are just four points above the playoff cut-off line and nine points ahead of the last-place Sabres (22 points). It’s a remarkable logjam.
In the West, the Avalanche (39 points) and Stars (34) are pulling away from the pack while the Predators (18) and Flames (19) drag behind it, but the other 12 teams are also separated by just nine points.
The Hawks have lost four in a row for the first time this season, but with 25 points, they’re still just two points out of a playoff spot —with a game in hand on the Mammoth above them.
“It’s an interesting league right now, to be honest,” coach Jeff Blashill said Tuesday. “It probably has as much to do with confidence as anything else, because everybody is so close.