It’s American Thanksgiving. Do you know where your team sits in the playoff race?
As most hockey fans know, the U.S. holiday — which comes about a quarter of the way into the NHL season — has long been an unofficial marker against which we can gauge a franchise’s post-season hopes. And as history tells us, it’s pretty accurate.
Of the 240 teams to find themselves in a playoff spot on U.S. Thanksgiving since the 2005-06 season*, 184 have gone on to make the post-season the following spring. That’s a 76.7 per cent success rate. Of the 56 teams that fell out of the picture after the Thanksgiving milestone, 31 were hovering within a single point of the final wild-card berth. Just two teams in the salary-cap era have found themselves outside the playoffs after sitting ahead of the final berth by 10 or more points.
(*This statistic does not include the 2019-20 or 2020-21 seasons, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.)
So, what can we learn from the 2023 Thanksgiving playoff picture? With an assist from Sportsnet Stats, here’s a snapshot of where things stand, and some context based on previous years to help inform what it means.
EASTERN CONFERENCE PLAYOFF PICTURE AT 2023 U.S. THANKSGIVING
Here’s what the Eastern Conference looks like as of Thursday morning:
Ten points separate the conference-leading Boston Bruins and the wild-card Detroit Red Wings, who sit in the final playoff spot, while all eight teams not in the playoff picture on Thursday are within just seven points. We could be in for another fun wild-card race.
The Philadelphia Flyers bring the biggest surprise in the first quarter of the season, far outplaying expectations and tiptoeing the line separating playoff teams from non-playoff teams, while the New Jersey Devils and New York Islanders — both of whom were post-season teams last spring — have struggled to keep pace.
What about teams that fall?
Since 2005-06, 26 teams have failed to make the playoffs after being in a playoff spot by two or more points at U.S. Thanksgiving. Predictably, the vast majority of those clubs were four or fewer points ahead of the last playoff spot — but there are a few exceptions.
Most recently, in 2017-18, the St. Louis Blues had a 10-point cushion between themselves and the final playoff spot (but finished the season outside the picture). That marked the second time in three years that a team dropped double-digit points after the 2015-16 Montreal Canadiens fell out of contention after building up an 11-point lead above the last-place playoff team at the time.
WESTERN CONFERENCE PLAYOFF PICTURE AT 2023 U.S. THANKSGIVING
Here’s what the Western Conference looks like as of Thursday morning:
The most pressing question in the West is, can the Edmonton Oilers climb back into contention? Nothing has gone to plan for the club, who now find themselves 10 points behind the Seattle Kraken for the second wild-card spot.
The Oilers are no stranger to being left in the cold at Thanksgiving, only to make a run — just last year, they sat at .500 after 20 games as of the U.S. holiday, but didn’t have much ground to make up, matching the Blues’ 20 points in the second wild-card spot at the time. This year tells a much different story at this point of the season.
Thanksgiving-rule odds are stacked heavily against them, but a 10-point climb has been done before — albeit, it’s been a while …
Looking at historic outliers to the Thanksgiving rule
On Thanksgiving morning 1959, the Chicago Black Hawks woke up 10 points behind the final playoff spot. By the following spring, they’d rallied their way into the post-season. Still, 64 years later, that climb to the playoffs remains the steepest in the NHL, matched only by the 1970-71 Toronto Maple Leafs.
Of course, it’s gotten a lot harder to make the playoffs since then, with league growth over the decades and parity at an all-time high in today’s game with only half of teams making the cut.
So, let’s look at a more recent climb to contention: In the past decade, the 2013-14 Dallas Stars hold the record for the biggest point deficit overcome to make the playoffs — they were eight points back of a playoff spot on Thanksgiving Day 2013 and finished the campaign in the second wild-card spot.
Playoff success among Thanksgiving outliers
As for what happens when these Thanksgiving-rule outliers enter the playoff bracket, let’s take a look at the past decade. Over the course of eight full seasons in the past 10 years — we’re not including 2019-20 or 2020-21 — we saw a total of 30 teams make the playoffs after being outside the picture at Thanksgiving, with at least three teams jumping into the picture from outside each season.
Of those 30 squads, nine made it past Round 1, five made it to the conference final, and two advanced to the Stanley Cup Final. The ultimate success story of the last decade was the 2018-19 St. Louis Blues, who one year earlier had fallen out of the playoff picture after being in the race on Thanksgiving 2017. Before their incredible run from the league’s basement all the way up to the top of the hockey world in the spring of 2019, they’d found themselves seven points behind the second wild-card team (Dallas) at the time of Thanksgiving 2018.
Most recently, we watched as the Florida Panthers streaked from the second wild-card spot to the Stanley Cup Final, where they lost to the Vegas Golden Knights. As of Thanksgiving 2022, they’d been just one point behind that second wild-card spot in a tight Eastern Conference.
So, as is tradition, the biggest question around the NHL’s Thanksgiving table is this: Who will make a run this year?
