Ranking all the potential NHL playoff wild-card teams by tier

The NHL’s playoff seeding includes a couple of wild-card teams to give the league’s elite clubs a supposedly cushy first-round matchup as a reward for a great season. It doesn’t always work out like that. 

Just ask the Tampa Bay Lightning, who lost to the eighth-seed Columbus Blue Jackets in four straight games back in 2019, or the Boston Bruins, who saw their record-setting season fall flat against the 92-point Florida Panthers last year.

Yes, the league’s best still want to secure a division crown to lock in home ice and provide some extra motivation during a long regular season, but there’s no promise they will face a pushover. Here’s what the top clubs can expect from the bevy of potential wild-card teams with a week left to play.

Do not pass GO, do not collect $200

These legitimate contenders await unlucky division winners. 

Wild-card hijinks ensue whenever a sufficient gulf opens between the two divisions in a conference. Case in point: the 2023-24 Tampa Bay Lightning. Tampa is locked into the Eastern Conference’s seventh seed, giving the Boston Bruins, New York Rangers, and Carolina Hurricanes plenty of motivation to finish first. The Lightning aren’t the juggernaut that won three Wales Trophies and two Stanley Cups from 2020-2022, but having to face Nikita Kucherov (43G, 141P), Victor Hedman, and Co. isn’t exactly a reward.

Since rounding out their top six by getting Anthony Duclair (7 G, 13 P in 15 GP for Tampa) from San Jose at the trade deadline, the Lightning are 11-3-1 and in the top six of scoring offense and defense. Both special teams are operating at a top-three level in that span. Despite the narrative that Kucherov is going it alone, captain Steve Stamkos has gotten white hot at exactly the right time; he has 15 goals and 26 points in 16 games since his second-line connection with two-way standouts Anthony Cirelli and Brandon Hagel became permanent at the deadline. It’s not reassuring that AHL vet Darren Raddysh and youngster Nick Perbix round out the top four on defense with Hedman and Erik Cernak, but with yet another future Hall-of-Famer in Andrei Vasilevskiy slowly finding his footing (2.61 GAA, .910 SV% since 3/1), will that matter? This is not the first-round draw a 105+ point team is looking for.

While Tampa’s spot in the Wild Card comes down to the NHL’s oft-criticized playoff format (they’re far better than the third-place hopefuls in the Metropolitan Division), the Vegas Golden Knights are actually the eighth-best team in the West by points total. They can still hunt down the L.A. Kings for third place in the Pacific Division or even the Nashville Predators for the first Wild Card, but Vegas’s latest skid could make climbing the standings difficult. Why are they such an undesirable matchup if they’re only in eighth place? 

Winning the 2023 Stanley Cup came with the injury-induced hangover that has stalled Vegas’s momentum so often this season. It also gave them more battle-tested, championship-winning players than anyone. High-profile trade acquisitions Tomas Hertl and the newly extended Noah Hanifin are getting all the press, but it’s original Knights William Karlsson (57 P in 67 GP, 55.3 FO%), Jonathan Marchessault (career-high 42 G), and Brayden McNabb (team-high +18) that have kept this team together through a trying season. In a city known for its glitz and glamor, the Golden Knights’ ability to graft makes them a tough out. That will become doubly true after captain Mark Stone (53P in 56GP) makes his annual miraculous recovery.

Trap teams

These teams are long shots to reach the Conference Final but could embarrass a presumptuous first-round opponent.

The Nashville Predators don’t have the talent of their playoff-bound peers, but no team has less to lose in the postseason. First-year GM Barry Trotz explained to Daily Faceoff’s Matt Larkin that he brought in veterans like Ryan O’Reilly and Gustav Nyquist to keep standards high during a transitional period but wouldn’t have expected that strategy to yield the first Wild Card berth. The Preds are 20-4-3 since a 9-2 home spanking at the hands of the Dallas Stars scuttled their U2 concert (somehow, this was considered a punishment) and galvanized their season. Why should their feel-good story end now?

O’Reilly and Nyquist have teed up another 40-goal season from linemate Filip Forsberg, Roman Josi is one of the three most effective defensemen on the planet, and Nashville’s turnaround has coincided with a Juuse Saros (2.43 GAA, .918 SV% since 2/16) heater between the pipes. Though they aren’t name brands, guys like Jeremy Lauzon (league-leading 377 hits) and Cole Smith add a heaviness to the lower rungs of this lineup that makes the Predators difficult to play. The Preds aren’t likely to win the Cup with a group so light on game-breaking talent, but underestimating them is a dangerous proposition; their locker room is walking on air, and few buildings get as rowdy as Bridgestone Arena.

Where Nashville has overachieved, it’s a wonder the Pittsburgh Penguins have faced such a fight to get to the dance. The Metropolitan Division is the weakest it’s been in years, but the Pens are only now leaving the rebuilding Flyers and disappointing Devils in the rearview. Off-season acquisitions Reilly Smith and Ryan Graves have fallen flat in the Steel City, and Kyle Dubas was right to trade Jake Guentzel from a team with so few future assets, but Pittsburgh’s misfortunes have come down mostly to bad finishing and bad luck. The Penguins dictate the lion’s share of expected goals (51.14%) and high-danger chances (52.65%) at 5-on-5 but score on just 9.4% of their attempts. Now that their conversion rate has skyrocketed to 11.4% since the trade deadline, it’s no surprise a roster with four slam dunk Hall-of-Famers has found its groove.

It’s true darkhorse MVP candidate Sidney Crosby (41 G, 90 P) has dragged his team along for much of the season, but linemate Bryan Rust (28 G, 55 P in 60 GP) is a high-level operator in his own right. As for those other Hall-of-Famers, Kris Letang just locked up his seventh 50-point season, Evgeni Malkin has come on strong (17 P in 20 GP) since Michael Bunting joined his line, and Erik Karlsson is quietly having the best defensive season of his career alongside Marcus Pettersson (57.40% of high-danger chances as a pair). This over-the-hill gang might not have enough juice to last 16 wins, but if they empty the bucket in the first round, they could surprise a younger team.

Frisky

These clubs are flawed but nonetheless will make life difficult in a seven-game series.

The 2023-24 Los Angeles Kings have served as the ultimate reminder that you can only put so much stock in a team’s performance before the turn of the year. The Kings were ninth in points on New Year’s Day with the fewest games played in the league, and their size and stifling defense screamed playoff hockey. After winning just three times in January, though, L.A. lost face, and coach Todd McLellan lost his job. Interim replacement Jim Hiller (19-11-1) has found some consistency, but the Kings and dud Pierre-Luc Dubois (40 P, -9 in 80 GP) have not returned to the ranks of the elite. Their defensive structure remains an annoying obstacle all the same.

McLellan’s 1-3-1 trap defense has stuck around under Hiller and is all about denying the zone. Led by Hall-of-Famers Anze Kopitar, once again a Selke candidate, and Drew Doughty, once again the league leader in average ice-time (25:48), the Kings (fourth in team defense) trap the puck and send a decent forward group featuring Adrian Kempe (73 P in 75 GP) and Trevor Moore (30 G) out on the rush. It’s a brand of hockey that hasn’t won anyone a Cup since the Dead Puck era, but it nonetheless makes the Kings hard to play, if not impossible to beat.

Like the Kings, no one is tabbing the New York Islanders to go all the way, but an abrasive playstyle means they don’t make it easy on anyone. A third-consecutive 30-goal season by Bo Horvat, Mat Barzal’s sudden willingness to shoot (career-high 238 SOG, 23 G), and Noah Dobson’s arrival as a superstar defenseman (70 P, +12, 24:31 ATOI) mean the Isles have more high-end talent than their fans are used to. With coach Patrick Roy, who replaced Lane Lambert as coach midseason, recapturing some of the defensive identity that made the Islanders so dangerous under Barry Trotz, New York should be a real threat. The problem is that everyone is three years older than they were when Trotz last led them to the final four.

The once indomitable defensive duo of Ryan Pulock and Adam Pelech looks older than it is after years of hard miles; they control less than 48% of scoring chances. The wheels fell off the injured Scott Mayfield in the first year of a baffling seven-year extension. Identity guys Cal Clutterbuck and Matt Martin used to dictate the tempo for this team; can they still do that at the combined age of 70? GM Lou Lamoriello has extended everything that moves on Long Island, and dark days loom. Still, if Ilya Sorokin (career-worst .909 SV%) can fend off the challenge of Roy’s old friend Semyon Varlamov (7-1-1 since March 1) in goal, there’s always a chance he can steal a game or, hopefully, four. Even in their death throes, the Isles are a tough, playoff-built team.

Who let these guys in?

You can’t look past anyone in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Unofficially, though…

The Detroit Red Wings have taken a lot of flak for … overcoming their obvious deficiencies to win hockey games. It’s unclear what about this entertaining group rubs so many analysts the wrong way, but Detroit deserves a lot of credit for putting points in the bank early and fighting hard to maintain its unlikely playoff berth. That said, those deficiencies always seem to come back. Hot streaks from Alex DeBrincat early on (9 G in 10 GP in October) and Alex Lyon near the midway point (8-2-2, .923 SV% in January) have kept Detroit in the mix for the final Wild Card, but there’s not enough luck in the world to vault them into the second round.

Dylan Larkin (33 G, 67 P in 66 GP), Lucas Raymond (29G, 69P in 80GP), and old rival Patrick Kane (20 G, 46 P in 48 GP) lead a top-10 offense, but the Wings’ commitment to scoring goals has left plenty of room to concede them. Coach Derek Lalonde has thrown his top pair of Moritz Seider and Jake Walman to the wolves to try to stop the bleeding, but, as the ugly numbers show (41.70% of scoring chances), they can only do so much with one-way forwards in front of them. Jeff Petry and Ben Chiarot look finished, and Lyon (3.65 GAA since March 1) is out of miracles. The Red Wings are deservedly proud of their efforts so far, but it’s hard to envision a scenario where this team plays the Rangers or Bruins and lasts longer than four games. If Detroit has gone all in on the one thing it does well, it’s a mystery that the Washington Capitals and Philadelphia Flyers have stuck around this long at all. Take a look at their rosters, and you’ll understand why A) the Caps are more concerned with Alex Ovechkin’s quest for the goal record and B) the Flyers have told anyone who will listen that they’re very much in the midst of a rebuild. Washington’s Spencer Carbery and Philadelphia’s John Tortorella deserve Jack Adams consideration for even sniffing the Stanley Cup Playoffs.