The Wild Sit On the Razor's Edge A Quarter Of the Way Through the Season

There are those in the hockey media who seek to raise NHL fans' blood pressure at all times. They’re the ones who are constantly moving goalposts or setting and then resetting the stakes of the season. Their refrains include: 

• Tonight’s game is a must-win (a favorite no matter how early it comes in an 82-game season) 
• This team finds itself in the thick of the playoff race (of course, they are, along with 17 other teams with playoff odds between 25% to 75%)

It’s one thing to hear that from players and coaches. They must hold this mentality at all times. The alternative is that they give up that edge, which would be unacceptable. Reporting those quotes is fine. On the other hand, it’s a bit disingenuous to use those quotes as a point of analysis. 

Distressingly, they are very correct in the case of the Minnesota Wild. 

At the quarter-season mark of the NHL season, it’s easy to predict which teams will be golfing by the end of April. 

The early-season favorites that have shown proof of concept are shoe-ins by now: the Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars, Vegas Golden Knights, Carolina Hurricanes, and Tampa Bay Lightning are locks barring some apocalyptic catastrophe. Rebuilding teams like the Nashville Predators, San Jose Sharks, Calgary Flames, and Chicago Blackhawks are already on the outside looking in, and they’ll probably seek to bolster their rebuilds by trading away roster players for future assets. 

The most powerful predictors of playoff probability typically stabilize around the 20-game mark. These include basic numbers such as regulation win percentage and goal differential. Combine that with each team’s position in the league standings, as well as a bit of common sense, and it’s easy to predict which teams will and won’t get to the playoffs. 

That’s why, of the 24 teams not mentioned above, half of them are already two-to-one favorites to make or miss the playoffs. 

Minnesota is not one of those teams. 

Depending on where you look, Minnesota could be above or below a 50% chance to make the playoffs. As of this writing (the morning of November 26), MoneyPuck.com rates the Wild at a 68% chance to make the playoffs, but The Athletic’s model rated them around 40% just a week ago. 

Luszczyszyn’s projection doesn’t include Minnesota’s dominant win over the Pittsburgh Penguins. Still, they beat the Winnipeg Jets and Carolina Hurricanes on the back of stellar goaltending -- not typically a sustainable path to victory. You can’t ask the Wild to give those four points back in the standings, but it raises questions going forward. 

But 40% versus nearly 70% is a wide gap. Why would two analytical models give such different results? MoneyPuck’s model gives more weight to recent scoring chances versus the past. The Wild have been much better over the past 10 games compared to the start of the season. The Athletic’s model is also based on player results, which can help it predict how poorly a team will perform during major injuries. 

It’s difficult to say which of these two projections is closer to the truth. What’s clear is that putting a number on Minnesota’s playoff odds is tricky. Data nerds call that “uncertainty.” 

The betting markets are another proxy for playoff chances, and Minnesota also looks okay in that regard. 

Looking around the rest of the Western Conference, Minnesota is on the razor’s edge. Those teams, and the Wild, are the ones who might end up in a fight over the wild-card playoff berths. Minnesota’s over/under standings points sit in a cluster of teams: 

• The LA Kings’ line is 98.5
• Anaheim’s at 94.5
• Edmonton’s at 97.5
• Utah’s at 95.5
• Winnipeg’s at 93.5

Zooming in on playoff odds from the same sportsbook, the Wild appear more likely to make the playoffs than miss at minus-175. That means that bettors who lay $175 on Minnesota would make only $100 in profit on a winning bet. 

This implies playoff odds of about 64%. Taken with MoneyPuck’s prediction, that looks quite comforting. 

On the other hand, eight teams have better odds than the Wild: 

• Dallas (-1500)
• Vegas (-1250)
• Edmonton (-380)
• LA Kings (-380)
• Utah (-250)
• Anaheim (-220)
• Winnipeg (-180)
• The Colorado Avalanche are off the board after their sensational start. 

How can nine teams be favored to make the playoffs? 

Two reasons: First, it appears these lines have a hefty profit margin for the sportsbook. Second, each of these teams only needs one team ahead of them to fall out of the standings. The chances that any given team ahead of the Wild or Jets hits a cold streak or a rash of injuries would cash most, if not all, of those eight bets. 

On the other hand, the teams behind the Wild could catch fire and pass them in the standings. Even the outsiders are only about five wins behind the Wild. The Seattle Kraken is projected to score 85.5 points, the St. Louis Blues 83.5, and the Vancouver Canucks 81.5. 

Seattle, St. Louis, and Vancouver each have a realistic chance to sneak into the playoffs. Part of those odds is the chance that their play drastically improves and they overtake the Wild in the standings. 

Just one more reason that Minnesota’s playoff chances look pretty good, but far from a guarantee. 

If you want to find more uncertainty, we can look into the typical 20-game benchmarks for playoff teams. The Wild have good marks in some powerful playoff predictors, but they aren’t great. For example, Minnesota’s goal differential of +4 (goals scored minus goals against) ranks 6th in the Western Conference. 

Typically, the top eight teams by goal differential represent each conference in the playoffs. Focus that down to only five-on-five, and Minnesota slides to 8th in the West. Some of the teams in the hunt, such as Seattle (plus-3) and Chicago (plus-5), have posted better marks than Minnesota, and Utah is tied at plus-1. 

Even if we nerd out and go from goals to expected goals (xG), the picture remains muddy. The benefit is that it removes goaltending and shooting talent from the equation -- two notoriously noisy factors that can skew even a 20-game sample. Again, Minnesota is around league average, with a minus-0.28 xG differential and a minus-1.5 at five-on-five (ranked 13th and 18th, respectively). 

Here, too, there are signs that the teams just behind them in the standings are of a similar quality. Western Conference teams ahead of Minnesota in five-on-five xG Differential include Calgary (plus-8.59), Utah (plus-5.05), and St. Louis (minus-.01). 

Any way you look at it, it’s a toss-up. A coin flip. In some important categories, Minnesota has an edge over the teams chasing it, but that edge can disappear over the next 60 games. 

I don’t want to be that guy, but (until further notice) every game counts for the Minnesota Wild.