It’s past American Thanksgiving already, I get that. All the turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and pumpkin pie has been eaten up. But American Thanksgiving holds a special significance in regards to the NHL regular season: if your team is in a playoff spot by that weekend, the chances that they will make the playoffs are historically very high. In fact, here is the data from the past five seasons:
How important is American Thanksgiving in relation to making the Stanley Cup Playoffs?
— Nick Alberga (@thegoldenmuzzy) November 21, 2018
Over the last five seasons, 77.5% (62-of-80) of teams in a playoff spot at American Thanksgiving have went on to clinch a berth in the postseason. @NHL
Yes, this article should have been content for Friday instead of five days later, but life intervenes sometimes. As you can see, 62/80 is a pretty high number considering we just barely passed the quarter-mark of the season. If a team is out of the playoffs right now it is certainly not impossible to make it in, but the chances are very slim. Let’s take a look at where the Senators sit right now though and where the rest of the conference is.
I didn’t even realize that the Senators had fallen to last place in the Eastern Conference, and that’s obviously not good news especially since they also have the most games played out of the wildcard teams. A 9-12-3 record is not horrifically bad, but it is bad enough to be amongst the bottom-five in the league and six points out from the eighth seed. They’ve lost four games in a row, and of course things would look a bit better with a record of 9-8-3, but they still were around four to five points out of a playoff spot at that point anyway.
Their goal differential is second worst in the league (only ahead of the LA Kings) and as I mentioned last week, they’re on pace to be one of the worst defensive teams ever by allowing 4.33 goals per game. Playoff models really don’t like their chances either, as Micah Blake McCurdy’s model gives them a 4% chance of making it...11% lower than the next worst team:
It’s certainly a bleak picture, even if nobody was really thinking about the playoffs anyway. In terms of other teams, it’s surprising to see the Sabres, Rangers, and Canadiens in playoff spots, and the Sabres might be the only one of the three that could actually stay there all year long. It’d be pretty shocking to see the Penguins miss, plus I think the Hurricanes and Panthers will make a push for a wildcard spot as well. Those latter three teams will try to be part of the 22.5% who defy expectations, and I’m sure at least one will make it in.
There might be some who point to the 2014-15 Senators team that was not in a playoff spot on Thanksgiving and say that anything is possible...But that team had a lot more talent than this current iteration. It would be amazing to see another cinderella run, but we might not see something like the Hamburglar run again for the rest of our lives. The Canadiens are on pace for 92 points with the last playoff spot, and to get to that, the Senators would need a record of something like 33-20-5, which seems too far out of reach.
Of course nobody genuinely expected Ottawa to be a playoff team or even contending for a playoff spot this season, but this is interesting to look at nonetheless. The 2018-19 Senators sure get points for being exciting most games, but they are essentially already out of the playoff picture.