Breaking down the NHL’s Eastern Conference Wildcard picture

Anthony Trudeau
Anthony Trudeau(atrud00)
Breaking down the NHL’s Eastern Conference Wildcard picture
Credit: David Kirouac-Imagn Images

Well past the halfway point and with one eye towards the 4 Nations Face-off, the 2024-25 season has had its share of surprises. Few would have expected the Washington Capitals to parlay an ambitious offseason into a comfortable lead on the Metropolitan Division field. Fewer still would have the big-spending Nashville Predators to flirt with the first-overall pick.

One aspect of the ongoing campaign that shouldn’t shock anyone is a crowded field of contenders for the final two spots in the Eastern Conference playoffs. The Panthers, Hurricanes, Maple Leafs, and Lightning are postseason institutions that might as well have punched their tickets back in October. The New Jersey Devils are too talented to miss the dance two years in a row. Add in the all-conquering Caps, and all six automatic spots are all but spoken for.

There are two Wildcard berths on offer, and, if we discount the floundering New York Islanders and aging Pittsburgh Penguins, seven teams that can realistically claim them. Here’s how they stack up.

The Favorites

These two clubs have the talent and momentum to stand out in a crowded field. 

Columbus Blue Jackets

What a story the NHL’s black sheep franchise has already written this season. Top center Sean Monahan (41 P in 41 GP, +17) has turned a risky long-term contract into a bargain, swaggering Russian winger Kirill Marchenko is scoring at an 87-point pace, and Zach Werenski (first in ATOI, second in scoring by a defenseman) has a real case for the Norris Trophy. A molten run of form in January has landed the team within a point of a Wildcard berth, and not even a week-to-week wrist injury to Monahan has taken the wind out of Columbus’ sails. With Adam Fantilli on fire (4 G, 8 P in 9 GP in Jan.) as Monahan’s stand-in between Marchenko and Dmitri Voronkov, the Blue Jackets ran their point streak to eight before losing to the Islanders on Martin Luther King Day. 

Most of the scoring has come from some iteration of the top line, Werenski, and blossoming 21-year-old forward Kent Johnson (13 G, 27 P in 33 GP), but coach Dean Evason isn’t worried about the sustainability of their sixth-placed scoring offense. Captain Boone Jenner and Yegor Chinakhov could be back in the lineup before March and represent built-in reinforcements for the stretch run.

There’s some question about the future of grinder Mathieu Olivier and top shutdown option Ivan Provorov, both UFAs and fixtures on our Trade Targets board, but it’s hard to envision veteran GM Don Waddell pulling the rug out from under a group that has earned the right to fight for its playoff destiny. If workhorse starter Elvis Merzlikins (3.06 GAA, .890 SV%) can avoid being a game loser, the Blue Jackets have a great chance to take over the second Wildcard spot.

Ottawa Senators

The Senators often find themselves grouped in with the division rival Detroit Red Wings and Buffalo Sabres. All three franchises have endured long, frustrating rebuilds but, of the three, Ottawa has always seemed to have the most playoff-ready roster. Divorced from an incompetent owner and a floundering front office, all their pieces are finally beginning to translate in the standings.

Nowhere has the Sens’ culture shift been more apparent than in their response to the absence of star goaltender Linus Ullmark. The 2023 Vezina winner was everything they had hoped for as their long-awaited savior in net (7-0-1, 1.30 GAA, .956 SV% in December), but after Ullmark went down with a back injury on Dec. 22, Ottawa won just one game out of its next six. That sort of adversity would have sunk the Senators in the D.J. Smith era, but, under new coach Travis Green, they instead reeled off an ongoing six-game point streak including a dramatic comeback victory over the Boston Bruins. 

Ullmark will be back any day now, and the team around him has seized the first Wildcard position thanks to streaking rookie Leevi Merilainen’s heroics in relief (6-2-1, 2.20 GAA, .917 SV%). They’ve had to win ugly (2.10 goals per game since 1/1, 29th in NHL), but that won’t always be the case; an anemic 9.65 team shooting % belies a bevy of offensive talent headlined by power forward Brady Tkachuk, streaky superstar Tim Stutzle, and crafty veteran Claude Giroux. Ottawa captain Tkachuk said the win over Boston “just felt different.” So do the Senators of 2024-25.

The Dark Horses

These teams have enough juice to make things interesting, but there are question marks that cloud their chances.

Montreal Canadiens

The Canadiens’ fiercely passionate fans are as opinionated as they come. They’re sure that Lane Hutson is a superstar, that the Caufield-Suzuki-Slafkovsky line has enough juice to carry a winning offense, and that the rebuild is paying off and ahead of schedule. They’ll argue until they’re blue in the face with anyone who disagrees, but based on their recent play, they’re running out of doubters to gang up on.

After an ugly start, the Canadiens have put together a 12-7-1 record since Dec. 1, good for the fourth-best mark in the league. Caufield (24 G, eighth in the NHL) and Suzuki (47 P in 46 GP) are leading the way on offense, and Hutson’s gaudy scoring numbers (rookie-best 38 P) have not come at the expense of defense; he’s developed excellent chemistry with veteran puck mover Mike Matheson at 5-on-5, where the duo controls more than 53% of scoring chances. Trade additions Patrik Laine (12 G in 18 GP) and Alexandre Carrier (+5, 20:10 ATOI in 15 GP) have also been a part of the turnaround at either end of the ice.

Two months of excellent hockey is far from a blip on the radar, but it’s fair to wonder if a club this early in its contention timeline will come crashing down to earth a la last season’s Flyers. Outside of Suzuki and Caufield, they’ve had to rely on a committee of veteran 2021 holdouts (Anderson, Evans, Gallagher) for even-strength goals, as Laine and Slafkovsky have combined for just six tallies at 5-on-5. Meaningful late-season games will work wonders for the long-term development of this young roster, but they might not have the horses to finish the job.

New York Rangers

Even if it didn’t warrant a silly, self-congratulatory banner, the Rangers’ 2024 Presidents’ Trophy triumph was nothing to sneeze at. They won 55 games and were a perfect shot from Sam Reinhart away from grabbing a 3-1 lead over the eventual Stanley Cup champions in the Eastern Conference Final. Sure, the Rangers were never a metric darling and had their fair share of luck, but they wouldn’t have expected to be on the outskirts of the playoff picture in January. No one would have.

After a 12-4-1 start, the wheels fell off for the Blueshirts, who stumbled to an astonishing 4-15 record over their next 19. GM Chris Drury took extreme measures to stop the bleeding, trading captain Jacob Trouba and former top-prospect Kaapo Kakko within 10 days of each other in December. Still, the ineffectiveness of veterans Vincent Trocheck (3 G in past 21 GP), Chris Kreider (2 A in 38 GP), and especially Mika Zibanejad (-25, second worst in the NHL) left New York without enough scoring pop to cover for predictably poor possession numbers (47.92% of scoring chances).

Despite all their missteps, the Rangers aren’t dead yet; they’re 6-1-3 since the turn of the year. Kreider has shown signs of life despite a brief injury absence (5 G in last 10 GP), Will Borgen has been a good fit beside K’Andre Miller since he arrived in the Kakko trade, and Igor Shesterkin’s shutout against the Blue Jackets on Sunday continued a strong month of play (4-0-1, 1.73 GAA, .934 SV%). The Rangers’ purple patch might be enough to convince Drury to find reinforcements in the trade market. He still believes there’s a winner buried underneath this mess, but is it already too late?

The Longshots

The math says these teams are still in it. How long will it stay that way?

Boston Bruins

In the offseason, I wrote that the Boston Bruins “earned the benefit of the doubt [and] were a 100-point team as long as Jeremy Swayman and David Pastrnak stayed healthy.” I’ll file that under “words I’d love to take back” along with a rose-colored assessment of the Elias Lindholm-Nikita Zadorov double signing. Maybe that’s the problem with the Bruins, that two decades of regular season success has granted them too much leeway to address their real issues.

Boston fired Jim Montgomery after an 8-9-3 start, and though both Swayman (2.59 GAA, .907 SV% in 20 GP) and the team (15-10-3, 11th in NHL) have been moderately better since Joe Sacco took over, what has the longtime assistant’s hyper-negative style actually fixed? Lindholm is a dud (though his 41-point pace is somehow fourth on the team), Zadorov is a living, breathing minor penalty (27, most in NHL), and yesterday’s victory over the lowly San Jose Sharks was the first time Boston has won in January without a 40-save performance by Swayman.

The Bruins don’t win without major contributions from their stars, of whom there are fewer now than ever. What would happen if Pastrnak, who is scorching hot (11 P in his last 4 GP), went down for any length of time? He has nearly double the points of the team’s third-highest scorer. What about another cold snap from Swayman, whose dreadful start showed how bad the B’s are without great goaltending? Boston is officially in the Wild Card as it stands but can be caught by Montreal as early as tonight. A loss to the Senators that saw them concede two 6-on-5 goals felt like a backbreaker.

Detroit Red Wings

The Detroit Red Wings wanted to play a more disciplined defensive game this season, but that resulted in a lineup full of guys who were gripping their sticks too tight and generally afraid to make plays. Before they fired Derek Lalonde, the Wings were outshot by five attempts per game and had the second-worst goal differential in the NHL. In the immortal words of John Tortorella, “safe is death,” and the Red Wings’ season was on life support before Steve Yzerman pulled the plug on Lalonde.

Under Todd McLellan, they’ve been far more proactive, outshooting the bad guys and riding a sizzling power play (41.9% since the coaching change) back to the .500 mark. Patrick Kane looks rejuvenated (6 G, 16 P in 12 GP under McLellan), Lucas Raymond is a star (50 P in 46 GP), and Marco Kasper (3 G, 5 P in last 5 GP) has been a revelation on Dylan Larkin’s left wing. 

So, why are the Wings a long shot? Just look at the schedule. The Red Wings have beaten some good teams including Florida and Washington on their road back to relevance, but the hard part starts now. Detroit has the toughest remaining schedule in the NHL, and losses to Tampa Bay and Dallas by a combined score of 9-1 over the weekend served as a reminder that even with McLellan on board, this team can be prone to sloppy, turnover-prone hockey. There will be growing pains, and for a team that probably can’t survive a three or four-game skid, that’s a problem.

Philadelphia Flyers

The Eastern Conference was in shambles in 2023-24, and the Philadelphia Flyers’ unlikely quest for the postseason was a pleasant distraction for a team that was still in the early stages of a rebuild. They expected to play tight, competitive hockey this season (coach John Tortorella wouldn’t accept anything less) while earning results that more accurately reflected a middling roster.

So far, that’s how their season has played out to the letter. Their structured game has given the Flyers the eighth-highest share of high-danger chances (52.25%), and they sit a game over .500. Still, there isn’t much game-breaking talent to speak of beyond Team Canada’s Travis Konecny (21 G, 54 P in 47 GP) and 20-year-old rookie Matvei Michkov (rookie-best 14 G). Owen Tippett is impactful, but he needs a ton of volume to score consistently (career 9.9 shooting %). Sean Couturier is not the same offensive player he was before a career-threatening back injury. Joel Farabee is on a career-worst scoring pace (6 G, 16 P in 44 GP) and drew a string of healthy scratches earlier this month. 

The shabby backup goaltending that sunk Philly last season remains an issue (league-worst .872 team SV%) despite starter Sam Ersson’s fine form (6-1, 1.66 GAA, .930 SV% since Christmas ). A year after he passed on a potentially lucrative firesale to see out a feel-good playoff chase, you’d expect GM Danny Briere to be a bit more cynical around this year’s trade deadline, especially in a field this crowded.

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POST SPONSORED BY bet365

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