Tiering 12 NHL teams’ playoff hopes: From ‘we can still fix this’ to ‘resigned to their fate’

Hard as it might be to believe, the 2024-25 NHL season is already more than halfway over: The average team has played 53% (or 43.1 out of 82 games) of the regular-season schedule by now. That means struggling squads are quickly running out of time to turn things around — a feeling of urgency made even more acute by the looming March 7 trade deadline, just 52 days from today.

There’s a hierarchy to teams in the panic-mode category, too: Some are still right in the mix, such as the Boston Bruins, with playoff odds around a coin flip despite an underperforming start. Some are hanging on by a thread, such as the Pittsburgh Penguins, knowing that they have to run up a string of wins while their rivals in the standings falter. And some, such as the Buffalo Sabres, need a miracle to keep their playoff hopes alive (or must simply decide to give up any pretense of competing down the stretch).

Let’s look at 12 teams who had designs on the playoffs before the season but have found themselves with a postseason probability around 50% or lower — sorting them into categories based on their current playoff odds and level of panic within each group.

Jump to a panic level:
Can fix this | Hanging on | Resigned to fate

We can still fix this

These are teams with playoff odds near 50-50 — so they could still make it in, but they have a lot more work to do over the next few months.