Stanley Cup Playoffs: Top 5 Canadian teams that will make the postseason
How many of the seven Canadian NHL teams will make it to the 2019-20 Stanley Cup Playoffs?
Out of the 31 (soon to be 32) NHL teams in the league, seven of them hail from the Great White North. Four of them are currently in playoff spots, and those four are likely to be the ones remaining in playoff spots come about a month’s time when we reach the end of the regular season and the Stanley Cup Playoffs start.
Coming from a Canadian, I would love it if the Stanley Cup came home to Canada. Preferably, it would be the Toronto Maple Leafs lifting the Cup in June, but any team in Canada is good for me.
75% of the playoff teams are coming from the Western Conference, with Toronto the sole Canadian survivor in the East. There is a small, but highly unlikely chance that the Canadiens can take a wildcard spot, but with the stacked deck in the Metropolitan division, it seems highly unlikely.
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Now, in the Western Conference, the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers look to make the playoffs out of the Pacific Division. Meanwhile, the Vancouver Canucks are holding onto the first wildcard spot.
Technically, the Winnipeg Jets have the same amount of points as the Nashville Predators, who are currently in the second wildcard spot, so they’re right in that race. If that happens, that would mean all four Canadian teams hailing from the Western Conference would be in the hunt for Stanley.
Let’s now look a little bit closer at each individual Canadian club. Some started high, but have since crashed and burned, while others started cold and are only now beginning to run hot. Others have just been good all year round. But, let’s take a look at all of them anyway.
The Flames and the Oilers probably have the best odds to make it into the playoffs, but there’s an overwhelming chance that they will be facing each other in round one. That would definitely be some playoff series if those two went at it. The Canucks and Jets have the most questionable odds, as they both sit in a wildcard spot, but at this point of the season, quite literally anything can happen.