The Tide Line
The waterline is each conference's playoff cut. Above it: cushion over the first team out. Below it: points back of the last team in.
Ship's Log: The Wrecks
Who's below the line, how deep, and what they looked like last April.
Still Afloat
The rest of last year's sixteen, thinnest cushion first. Anything under three points is taking on water.
| Team | Record | Pts | 84-gm pace | Cushion | Last spring |
|---|
How It's Calculated
The sixteen
"Last season's playoff teams" are the 16 teams in the NHL's own 2026 playoff bracket, pulled straight from the API. No memory, no vibes.
The cut line
A team is in a spot if it's top three in its division or one of its conference's two wild cards, using the league's own divisionSequence and wildcardSequence from today's standings. That means the NHL's tiebreakers are already baked in.
Points back = points of the conference's second wild card minus the team's points. Cushion = the team's points minus the first team out. Games in hand are listed separately, because 3 points back with 3 games in hand isn't much of a wreck.
Pace
84-game pace = points percentage × 168. It's November. Pace is a mood, not a forecast, and early-season pace famously lies.
Freshness
Everything is baked into the page by update.py from the NHL API. It doesn't refresh itself; the timestamp up top tells you when it was last run.
Sources
Not affiliated with the NHL, the NHLPA, any team or any player. Fan-made, built from public NHL stats. Team names are used to identify teams; no logos, no marks. The jokes are ours, the numbers are the league's.