Hockey Bytes: Why Are the Red Wings, Sabres and Senators Still Stuck in Playoff Purgatory?
How 3 of the longest playoff droughts in NHL history may continue for another year. Plus, the Avs' uphill fight to sustain their renaissance.
Welcome to Hockey Bytes — a weekly NHL column in which I point out several byte-sized pieces of information that jumped out to me from my various hockey spreadsheets. If you’ve noticed a Hockey Byte of your own, email me and I’ll feature it in a future column!
🧊 How (Not) To End a Drought
In all of NHL history, only 18 teams have ever run up a stretch with at least seven consecutive non-playoff seasons. Amazingly, three of those droughts are active right now in Buffalo (13 seasons), Detroit (8 seasons) and Ottawa (7 seasons).
(Yes, some of the lack of historical examples is due to the NHL having only six teams for a long period of its history, four of which would make the playoffs. But this is also the first time ever that so many teams had 7+ year droughts active at the same time, despite the Original Six era ending nearly six decades ago.)
What’s even more incredible — or just sad — is that neither the Sabres, Red Wings nor Senators are especially likely to see their drought end this season. According to my NHL Elo forecast model, each checks in with less than a 35 percent chance to make the playoffs at the moment:
Now, I don’t want to overstate the likelihood that all three historic skids continue through 2024-25: In 67 percent of Elo’s simulations on Monday, at least one of the three clubs ended their drought. So most likely, we will see one of them end.1 But the fact that each member of the trio has a 65 percent chance (or worse) to miss the playoffs — after already fighting so hard for so many years — tells us something about the lack of progress being made in each situation.
Last year, I wrote that the Red Wings might finally be ready to re-join the NHL’s elite as former star captain-turned-GM Steve Yzerman’s long-term plan began to pay dividends. But the team played up-and-down hockey all season, and an 8-12-3 record from Leap Day onward ruined what had been a 70%+ playoff probability. This year’s Wings have gotten improved goaltending from new starter Cam Talbot, which you might think would finally be the missing piece for Detroit… but their offense has fallen from No. 9 to No. 28, with just two players (Alex DeBrincat and Dylan Larkin) on pace for even 25 adjusted goals and only one other (Lucas Raymond) on pace for even 50 adjusted points.
As for Buffalo, they have the opposite problem, ranking 12th on offense but 26th on defense this season. That’s part of a string of seasons in which the Sabres’ performance has lurched wildly between good and bad on both sides of the puck, never finding a way to sync up the positives at the same time. The avatar for this might be mercurial 6’6” center Tage Thompson, who broke out to become one of the league’s deadliest scorers in 2022-23, then lost a lot of that touch last year, only to be on pace for 65 goals this year before hitting injured reserve last week. Even when he returns, however, Buffalo will need to do a better job of keeping the puck out of its own net.
Ottawa has the best odds to end the drought out of our long-suffering teams, for whatever that is worth. And between Brady Tkachuk, Tim Stützle and company, the Senators have the talent to be a playoff team. But big offseason pickup Linus Ullmark hasn’t found things as easy in Ottawa’s net as they were in Boston (or Buffalo) over the previous few seasons, and the Sens got off to a sub-.500 start despite a positive goal differential. If any of our teams here are going to kick down the playoff door, however, it’s most likely to be Ottawa: In 52% of sims where at least one of the long droughts end, the Senators make the playoffs.
Still, it’s a bit surprising that things remain such a struggle in each case. As recently as the 2022-23 season, Buffalo, Ottawa and Detroit all ranked among the NHL’s six youngest teams (including ties) by average roster age, highlighting how much up-and-coming talent these teams had been stockpiling during their time in the wilderness. The Sens and especially the Red Wings then tried to take the next step in rebuilding by adding veterans like Patrick Kane, Shayne Gostisbehere, Claude Giroux and Vladimir Tarasenko.
All of this would seem to represent a logical blueprint for building a new contender and ending a long playoff drought. But for each team, those plans haven’t really worked yet. There’s still time — and, again, it’s fairly likely that one of them will succeed at long last. Right now, though, the Sens, Sabres and Wings all sit in a familiar yet highly unpleasant place: Outside the playoffs.
🧊 Slippery Slopes
I wrote a few weeks ago that the Colorado Avalanche were one of the most disappointing teams to begin this 2024-25 NHL season, with the team fighting to keep its playoff odds above 50 percent. While they’ve regained some ground recently, boosting their chances to 61 percent, the Avs still have some major problems on the defensive side of things, ranking 30th in opponent goals per game, 32nd in save percentage and 32nd in goaltending GAR.
But there’s another factor to be worried about as an Avs fan going forward: the schedule.
Colorado has built its 9-9 record and uncharacteristically poor -0.39 GPG differential while facing the easiest schedule of any team in the early going, with an average opponent Elo rating of 1478 after also adjusting for home-ice advantage. But over the rest of the regular season, the Avalanche will face the league’s sixth-hardest set of average opponents (1510 Elo). No team has a bigger differential in schedule strength between their past and future opponents by Elo:
A couple of years ago, the Avalanche seemed like they were on the verge of another dynasty2 after winning the Cup with one of the best championship seasons of any team ever. For a variety of reasons, though, it’s been a struggle to build on that title-winning effort ever since, despite the individual heroics of 2024 Hart Trophy winner Nathan MacKinnon or Cale Makar with his Bobby Orr numbers this season.
While they still are more likely to return to the playoffs than not — and are one of 14 teams with at least 2 percent Cup odds — this Colorado squad doesn’t feel anywhere near as imposing as it did back in 2022, and the uptick in schedule strength will test their resolve even more over the rest of the season.
Filed under: NHL, Hockey, Hockey Bytes
Since all three are in the Atlantic division (and therefore their chances are highly interconnected), it actually becomes more likely that at least one will make the playoffs than if each probability was independent — but less likely that two or more make it, and nearly impossible for all three to make it.
If we consider their ‘90s/’00s run a dynasty — they never won back-to-back Cups, taking two in six seasons at their peak — but at the same time, the star power was SO blinding.