What can we actually learn in October?
What to take away from the first month of the NHL season
The NHL season is an 82-game marathon, not a sprint. Your team gets off to a slow start? No worries, don’t start panicking until maybe Thanksgiving. At least that’s what we’re told.
Games in October don’t count for less in the standings than, say, down the stretch in March. But it’s also true that getting off to a rough start usually doesn’t bode well. It’s a long season, but we can learn a fair amount about in a team in a short amount of time.
Let’s take a look at where things were at through Halloween last year. Eleven teams that made the playoffs last year were in a playoff spot at that point in time. There was a decent correlation between points percentage through Halloween and points percentage at the end of the regular season (r = .767, for the statistics-inclined folks).
What about in terms of how a team plays? Do teams with a high expected goals share in October still maintain that level of play for a whole regular season? Last year, the answer was yes, to a certain extent (r = .671, again, for the statistics-inclined folks).
This isn’t just a one-year thing, either. The 2023-24 season had fairly similar results, both in terms of correlation and that 11 playoff teams were in a playoff spot at the end of October. The 2022-23 season had 12 playoff teams in playoff position, though there were only 10the previous year.
What do we do with this? What do we do with a league where seemingly most of the regular season is spent jockeying for seeding instead of actually meaningful?
I don’t have the answers for those questions. The NHL’s point system certainly doesn’t help, though I’m not sure a 3-2-1-0 fixes all of the problems either. I haven’t done the math on that. The NHL’s nonsensical division-based playoff format also doesn’t help.
But here’s what you can take away from the first month of the season.
If you’re not in a playoff spot by Halloween, you better have a good reason
It’s not a guarantee that you’ll make the playoffs if you’re in a playoff spot by the end of October, but it’s usually a pretty good sign that you’re doing something right. However, if you’re out of a playoff spot, you’re going to need a pretty good excuse.
Let’s take a look at the Western Conference last year, which saw more interesting post-Halloween movement than the Eastern Conference. As opposed to the Eastern Conference, which only saw the two wild card spots shift from the Rangers and Blue Jackets to the Senators and Canadiens, in the West, the third spot in the Pacific Division switched hands, as did both wild-card slots.
You know who missed the Halloween cutoff both last year and the year prior? The Edmonton Oilers, who went on to make it to the Stanley Cup Final both seasons. Both years, they had a five-on-five expected goals share above 55 percent, which is excellent. But a bad run of puck luck both years put them behind the eight ball before regressing to the mean the rest of the way.
Colorado was another contender in the West last year who was below the playoff line on Oct. 31. The Avalanche went 5-6-0 in October last season, mostly due to their goaltending imploding right out of the gate. Colorado gave up 46 goals in its first 11 games, including 29 on 20.5 expected at five-on-five, according to Natural Stat Trick. Nobody had a worse save percentage at five-on-five in October last year than the Avalanche at .868. That, plus a flurry of injuries, created an untenable situation.
The Avalanche took action, overhauling their goaltending corps. Justus Annunen (minus-5.85 Goals Saved Above Expected in 11 games for the Avs, per Evolving-Hockey) was shipped out to Nashville for Scott Wedgewood, while Alexandar Georgiev (minus-6.9 GSAx in 18 games) was exiled to San Jose as part of a trade to acquire Mackenzie Blackwood. Colorado had stability in the crease the rest of the season, and its fortunes quickly turned around.
Sometimes, that excuse is coaching. The Oilers fired their coach not long after a miserable October in 2023, and the Blues did something similar last year. They finished October outside of a playoff spot and continued to slump in November before canning head coach Drew Bannister. St. Louis quickly nabbed Jim Montgomery right after Boston fired him, and the Blues went on a tear the second half of the season to make the playoffs.
It’s a long season, but even early on, there has to be something to point to in order for things to turn around.
But a strong October doesn’t rule out a collapse
The New York Rangers and the Vancouver Canucks had a lot in common last year.
Both teams enjoyed very successful regular seasons the prior year (the Rangers led the league in points while the Canucks won the Pacific Division) despite both teams seeming like fairly obvious regression candidates. Vancouver finished the 2023-24 season with the highest PDO at five-on-five. The Rangers, meanwhile, somehow only had a plus-1 goal differential at five-on-five, were underwater in expected goals and leaned on goaltender Igor Shesterkin far too often.
But Vancouver and New York started the 2024-25 season decently well, with both teams being in a playoff spot by the end of October. The underlying numbers for both squads were fine. Not earth-shattering, but nothing indicated that an impending collapse was coming.
However, that’s exactly what happened. Both teams wound up missing the playoffs entirely and made more headlines for what was happening off the ice than on.
The Rangers’ locker room seemingly never recovered from Barclay Goodrow getting waived in the offseason after he wouldn’t waive his no-trade clause. Captain Jacob Trouba was shopped in the offseason before eventually getting shipped off to Anaheim in December. Former second overall pick Kaapo Kakko was dealt to Seattle. The Rangers’ play disintegrated, and not even Shesterkin could make up for it.
Vancouver dealt with its own collapsing locker room. Franchise center Elias Pettersson was having the worst year of his career amid tensions with teammate J.T. Miller. To solve the issue, Vancouver sent Miller to, guess who, the Rangers. The move wasn’t enough to save either team’s season.
More often than not, we learn a fair amount about a team in October. A slow start may not be a death sentence, but it takes a lot to get back in — or fall out of — the playoff conversation.