The Washington Capitals are still alive in the playoff race, but their mathematical odds continue to dwindle with each loss.
MoneyPuck, one of the top analytical resources in hockey, updated its playoff odds table after the Capitals’ dreadful 5-1 loss in Seattle. The results are not pretty for the Caps: after starting the week with 39.1 percent odds of qualifying for the postseason, their loss to the Kraken dropped them a full 8.6 percentage points. The team overall has lost six of its last seven games, earning just three standings points.
According to MoneyPuck’s model, the Capitals now have just a 30.5 percent chance of playing playoff hockey in April. The only teams in the Eastern Conference with worse odds are the Philadelphia Flyers (27.4%), Ottawa Senators (24.6%), Columbus Blue Jackets (21.7%), New Jersey Devils (14.7%), Toronto Maple Leafs (4.5%), and the New York Rangers (0.9%).
The likely only reason the Capitals’ chances haven’t plummeted further is that no team in the Metropolitan Division, other than the Carolina Hurricanes, has been able to pull away from the rest of the pack.
Despite their recent failures, the Capitals remain just six points back of the Pittsburgh Penguins for second in the division and just four points back of the New York Islanders for third. MoneyPuck has the Penguins’ playoff odds at 78.9 percent and the Islanders’ at 58.5 percent.
The model also places heavy weight on goaltending and places less emphasis on recent games, which is likely propping up the Capitals further. The Caps were analytically one of the top five teams in the NHL through the first two months of the season, but have since fallen off drastically. Meanwhile, Logan Thompson (16.7) remains one of the top netminders in the league, ranking behind just Ilya Sorokin (24.7) and Andrei Vasilevskiy (21.7) in MoneyPuck’s goals saved above expected.
Given those factors, the Capitals actually still have better odds at winning the Stanley Cup (2.5%) than five of the teams ahead of them in playoff qualification odds. However, they also now have almost as good odds (1.5%) of winning the draft lottery and picking first overall.
The good news is that the model can fluctuate just as quickly in the other direction if the Capitals were to string together a few wins. The bad news is that they haven’t won two games in a row since early December. Unless they find a way to turn that trend around, they’re likely to sit out the playoffs in what could be Alex Ovechkin’s final season in the NHL.
