With the Red Wings mired in a 3-game slump, Detroit no longer sits in a Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference standings.
Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff notes that the Wings’ competitors aren’t exactly playing like world-beaters, either, with one exception:
The Red Wings are 2-4-1 over the last seven games. They’ve lost three in a row. And yet, it wasn’t until Tuesday’s 2-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes that the club was finally slipping out of one of the coveted playoff slots.
As they ready to play the Utah Hockey Club on Thursday at Little Caesars Arena, the Red Wings are now situated 10th overall in the East. Still, they are a scant point out of the playoffs.
It was the New York Rangers who moved past Detroit into a the eighth seed in the East on Tuesday. And they did so without even playing. Detroit’s loss dropped the club behind the Rangers via a tiebreaker. Both had 66 points at the time. It marked the first time since Feb. 1 that the Wings weren’t occupying a postseason position.
Wednesday, both the Rangers and Ottawa Senators were in action. Taking a 4-3 overtime verdict over the Chicago Blackhawks, Ottawa jumped past both Detroit and the Rangers into eighth spot with 67 points. New York squandered a 2-1 lead and lost 3-2 in OT to the Washington Capitals. The Rangers fell into ninth with 67 points, percentage points behind the Senators.
Over the past 10 games, Ottawa is 4-5-1. The Rangers are 6-3-1, which actually makes them the hottest team in this race.
Detroit is 5-4-1, as are the Columbus Blue Jackets. Recent winners of back-to-back games over the Wings, Columbus is seventh in the East with 68 points.
At 65 points, the Montreal Canadiens have won five in a row. Even at that, the Habs are only 6-4 through the past 10 games.
As such, and as you might expect, The Athletic asked Dom Luszczyszyn to offer “Three Reasons Why the Red Wings Are Unlikely to Make the Playoffs,” which is pretty easy for Luszczyszyn, whose beloved standings-predicting model like the Red Wings very much.
We’ll go with the obvious reason why the Wings’ road to the playoffs is a skate uphill, and leave reading about the rest to you:
It’s no secret the Red Wings have the most daunting schedule going forward, and that plays a massive part in the team’s subdued chances. Of Detroit’s 21 remaining games, 13 are on the road and their average opponent Net Rating is plus-17.
Those figures are straight out of the latest Playoff Report, but what does that actually mean?
It means that of Detroit’s remaining 21 games, 12 are against contenders — teams projected to finish this season with 100 or more points. It means no off nights with just one (!) game against a team projected to finish with fewer than 85 points this season (Buffalo). It means a steep uphill climb in which every single point will have to be earned and fought for.
That’s not impossible, of course, but it does mean the Red Wings are less likely to win almost every one of their 21 games going forward. In fact, of Detroit’s remaining games, the Red Wings will likely be favored to win in only two of them.
Against an average schedule, the Red Wings would be expected to earn 9.5 wins over their final 21 games. Because of the home-ice imbalance and opponent strength of their actual schedule, however, the Red Wings are only expected to earn 8.3 wins — 1.2 fewer.
That may not seem like a lot, but over just 21 games, it’s huge. In an extremely tight Eastern Conference, those 1.2 projected wins could likely be the difference between out and in. An extra 2.4 points would put Detroit’s forecast at 89 points, enough to push Detroit’s playoff odds to 36 percent.
The team’s daunting schedule is a huge factor as to why the team’s odds sit at 16 percent instead.
Continued (paywall); I don’t know whether the Red Wings will make the playoffs. I know that it’s a very good thing that they’re playoff-relevant at this point in the season, and that the team can remain in the playoff mix until the end of the year.
I never expected the Wings to make the playoffs when Todd McLellan took over from Derek Lalonde, and in my books, the fact that they’re going to compete for a spot–though the team’s going to have to out-perform expectations, be they from Luszczyszyn and everybody else–is an excellent development.
