The Canadian | What if even the “mix” was already out of reach?

Since it was known that reaching the playoffs represented an ambitious mandate for the Canadian in 2024-2025, management expressed the wish to be at least in the playoff picture at the end of the season. Or “in the mix”, as we have been saying for several weeks.

At the team’s golf tournament in mid-September, however, no one quantified this goal. We simply stated that we aimed to play “meaningful matches” as late as possible. In other words, matches which would have an impact on the ranking and which would allow the team to maintain hope of extending its season.

However, after 16 matches, we can wonder if the “mix” is not already out of reach. This may seem cruelly early, especially with 66 matches still on the calendar. But different clues point towards this conclusion.

To see this more clearly, we attempted to find a definition of “mix” by first determining how many points are needed to enter the playoffs.

In nine complete seasons^⁠1 since 2013-2014, since the current qualification system was in place, an average of 95 points has been necessary to access the spring tournament. Among the 18 clubs in our sample that were last qualified in the East or West in the meantime, the median is also 95 points; about half needed more, and the other half got there with a lower harvest.

Over the last decade, therefore, 17 times out of 18, the last qualified club has amassed 90 to 100 points. Only the 2015-16 Minnesota Wild made the playoffs with 87 points.

Year after year, at 100 points, a team is qualified. We can therefore establish that from 95 to 99 points, the chances of qualification are excellent, and that they remain appreciable from 90 to 94 points, depending on the quality of the competition during a given season. We therefore propose to establish the lower limit of the “mix” at 85 points, or 5 less.

With these four targets in mind (85, 90, 95 and 100), we have mapped the progression of the Canadian, season by season, since 2021-2022.

The exercise is obviously imperfect, since no team accumulates points in such a linear fashion, but it nevertheless allows us to measure, after each match, where the organization stands in relation to its overall objective.

We see, for example, that in 2021-2022, the season which sounded the death knell for the Bergevin administration, the club was never able to hope for anything. In 2022-2023, the Habs have held out for around thirty games. In 2023-2024, he stayed near the “mix” for 50 games before taking off. As a point of reference, let’s point out that this is approximately when Sean Monahan was traded.

After 16 games, in 2024-2025, the Canadian is considerably behind, even if he managed, on Monday, to end a long series of defeats. To be on the “mix” curve, he would need to have accumulated 16.6 points, and to start talking about series, 17.6 points. However, he only has 12.

Players and coaches will remember that there is still a lot of hockey to be played, and that is true. However, let us emphasize two things. First, the 20-game mark is fast approaching. This first quarter of the season approximately coincides with American Thanksgiving and, for years, a large part of the portrait of the series remains unchanged from this moment until the end of the calendar. The Canadian will likely miss this first meeting.

Next, our projection is based on an 82-game schedule. However, teams do not manage their workforce with this sole objective in mind. Where the distance between the club and the “mix” will be the most critical is at the trade deadline, scheduled for March 7, 2025. At that time, the Canadian will have played 62 games.

We have therefore calculated the pace that Martin St-Louis’ men will have to display during the 46 matches separating them from this fateful date in order to return either to the “mix” or to a playoff scenario.

The Habs would therefore need to amass 56.5% of the available points by March 7 in order to remain in the “mix”. He should then quickly stock up on victories, because each defeat in overtime or in a shootout, which would give him one point out of two, would take him further from his goal rather than bringing him closer to it. And each setback in regulation time would only make the climb steeper.

The target, to stay in the game, is set at 64.2 points after 62 games. Below this threshold, one can imagine that management would not hesitate to trade its most attractive players as the trade deadline approaches – Jake Evans, David Savard, Joel Armia – with the probable effect of seeing the club nosedive at the end of the course.

The mission is obviously not impossible. But it is highly dangerous. Because it will require a team that has never approached the .500 mark not only to reach it, but also to exceed it by an appreciable margin.

Not impossible, certainly. But certainly unlikely.

1. Excluding the shortened 2019-2020 and 2021 seasons.