from Travis Yost of TSN,

One of the fascinating parts of the NHL regular season is how tight the standings appear on the surface. Elite and terrible teams become obvious very early, but the middle of the pack always appears to be a muddied mess. Consider the conference races right now. In the East, you have nine teams separated by four wins or fewer. In the West, you have eight teams separated by four wins or fewer. Add in the fact that playoff races are division-based under the latest realignment –finish in the top three of your division, regardless of record, and you’re in – and you further complicate the situation.

But reality is quite different. By now you have probably heard of certain checkpoints or markers that teams reference to legitimize (or delegitimize) their playoff likelihood. Some prefer to look at a team’s position when American Thanksgiving rolls around. Others prefer to wait until Christmas. In many cases, we don’t need that many games to understand a team’s fate as it pertains to the postseason.

Even under the funky division-based playoff system, we have a very strong handle on a team’s fate by about the 20-game mark, and possibly earlier. We don’t need to run complex simulations to understand exact probabilities in varying environments.

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