The seconds month of the NHL season is in the books and it’s time to look at how the NHL’s playoff race is evolving. 

After each night’s slate of games is finished, our playoff projections page is updated taking into account the results from those games and fresh new data to feed into the model. Every night, everything changes and those changes can add up — especially if a team goes on a heater (or cooler). Those changes can also be difficult to view at a glance and it’s good practice to take stock regularly of what’s been happening.

This is the Playoff Report, a monthly check-in of each team’s chances of making the playoffs, the trends within the race, and why the biggest movers are on the rise or declining.

Here’s how the race currently shapes up.

The East

You can pencil in the Lightning and Hurricanes already — it would be a massive surprise if they didn’t make it. The Capitals are close to that level, while the Devils are relatively safe, though the Jack Hughes injury looms large there.

After that, it’s a dog fight. Two months in and every team still has a very real chance.

Ottawa and Florida look safest on paper, especially with one Tkachuk back and the other’s return on the horizon. The Canadiens and Blue Jackets sit right at the 50-50 mark, with a lot of challengers nipping right underneath.

Toronto’s track record keeps the Leafs at the top of that pile, though they’ll have to actually start playing up to that ability soon. It’s a similar story for the Rangers, though they take a hit with an injury to Adam Fox. The rest of the East still has more to prove, given where they started the season.

The Islanders are worth mentioning within that group as they looked like they had the best chance to break through thanks to the stunning play of Matthew Schaefer — until they lost Kyle Palmieri for the season.

The West

The West is a lot more cut-and-dry than the East, with eight teams above 60 percent. Colorado and Dallas are locks, and Vegas is probably safe, too, despite a 4-4-5 record over the last month. The Kings have earned their keep and are almost in that group.

The next four are likely, but there are reasons not to call them safe just yet. The Wild still look mid, the Oilers’ have not played anywhere close to their ceiling, the Ducks don’t have the track record, and the Jets could be on thin ice without Connor Hellebuyck.

Despite that, there aren’t a lot of threats to challenge them. The Mammoth are right on the bubble, but haven’t looked the same since a hot start. The Canucks and Blues get some reverence for their history, but both have looked abysmal this season. 

As for Chicago and Seattle, it is really difficult to have too much faith in either team, given what they were expected to be going into the season, and also how they’ve played. Both teams managed just a 42 percent xG over the last month.

On the riseWashington Capitals

Before the season started, I had one request for the Capitals: Do it again. Well, they’re doing it again — and they’re doing it even better this time around.

Becoming a true contender means building a track record at that level. It’s not enough to do it once, a team has to prove itself as a consistent force. The Capitals are doing exactly that and are starting to get some legitimate love for it. They look like the real deal. For the season, Washington’s xG is up to 54 percent from 52 percent last season, and the Capitals are scoring 63 percent of the goals at five-on-five — second only to Colorado.

That second number may seem a little too high relative to expectations, but it’s mostly built on goaltending, where Washington’s most important piece that had to do it again, is in fact doing it again. Logan Thompson ranks third in the league with 17.8 goals saved and his start has pushed him to some lofty heights: The model now considers him the fourth-best goalie in the world. 

Thompson is a huge part of Washington’s push toward the contender tier, but it also helps to have a top five blue line. Last year’s two big acquisitions, Jakob Chychrun and Matt Roy, have been especially good this season.

Put it all together and the Capitals not only look like a solid playoff bet again, but one of the top teams in the East. Only two teams saw their Cup chances grow more over the last month. That they had such a strong month despite the league’s second-hardest schedule over the last month also plays a part in that.

Tampa Bay Lightning

Some people questioned Tampa Bay’s high standing after a modest start to the season. Those questions have been silenced: The Lightning are a wagon. No team saw a larger rise in its Stanley Cup chances over the last month than Tampa Bay, which went 10-2-0 while outscoring teams 47-29. The Lightning look like the clear-cut favorite in the East and the No. 2 team in the league behind Colorado (though with an easier path in the East).

The four biggest contributors to that are Tampa Bay’s two superstar forwards and two emerging defenders. Up front, Brandon Hagel is proving last season was no fluke after scoring 11 goals and 18 points in 11 games while Nikita Kucherov looks back to his usual self with 21 points in 12 games. On the back-end, J.J. Moser and Darren Raddysh have stepped up big time in the absence of Victor Hedman and Ryan McDonagh. Moser has been a shutdown ace while Raddysh has delivered offensively with 12 points in 12 games.

The Lightning look the deepest they’ve looked since going to three straight Cup finals.

Anaheim Ducks

The Ducks flew out of the gates early with a scintillating record and slowed down a bit in the month since. They’re still a team finding its level and the most encouraging thing about their more tepid November is their baseline looking a lot higher than previous seasons. The Ducks may be 7-6-0 since the last Playoff Report, but in that time, they bumped their xG up to 49 percent, up from 47 percent over the first month. 

That’s a nice showing considering they faced one of the league’s hardest schedules and puts Anaheim on a path toward legitimizing its playoff standing. The Ducks started the month on the outside looking in with some skepticism surrounding their start. Now, there’s a bit more weight to it.

A big part of that is the team’s top duo cementing themselves as true difference-makers. Leo Carlsson and Cutter Gauthier started the season with a combined Net Rating of plus-3.2. They’re up to plus-18.4 now.

Columbus Blue Jackets

It’s probably a bit strange to see a team that went 4-3-5 here, but the Blue Jackets are playing some sneaky good hockey over the last little bit. Columbus was seventh in five-on-five xG over the last month (53.6 percent) while generating a lot of chances, fourth in power play xG (11.5 xGF/60), and average on the penalty kill (8.9 xGA/60). Put it all together and the Blue Jackets were a top 10 team overall — they just didn’t get the results to match.

Whether those results come remains to be seen, but the Blue Jackets are starting to look interesting on paper. The defense led by Zach Werenski is coming together with the emergence of Denton Mateychuk being especially intriguing. Charlie Coyle has been a strong defensive addition up front while Cole Sillinger has been a pleasant surprise in that regard, too. Perhaps most importantly is Columbus looks like it has a real one between the pipes in Jet Greaves. He’s saved eight goals above expected in a starter’s role.

Columbus is a team to watch in December, especially with a very difficult schedule on the docket. That will be the true test to see if this team is legit.

Honorable Mention: No team’s playoff chances climbed more than the Minnesota Wild’s, which jumped 36 percentage points over the last month. The model, however, is still not convinced given the team’s middling possession share. The wins matter, but we’ll see how the team looks when they’re not getting .957 goaltending at five-on-five. 

Falling offCanada

Yes, Canada. The country. Well, not the country, but the country’s teams. Five of them anyway. Ottawa and Montreal, you’re safe. For now …

Seven teams saw their playoff chances drop by 15 percentage points over the last month and four of them were from Canada. The Leafs were highest at minus-29 percent followed by Winnipeg (minus-24 percent), Vancouver (minus-20 percent) and Edmonton (minus-16 percent). Calgary’s chances were already cooked and a 5-5-2 record wasn’t saving the Flames.

All of that is not just due to losses piling up, but the teams looking much weaker in the process. 

Edmonton’s Net Rating fell more than any team, a staggering 28 goals that puts the team on high alert compared to previous seasons where a slow start was met with just a shrug from the model. “They’ll be fine” is a lot harder to say this time around given how poor the Oilers look at five-on-five. Winnipeg is next, falling 19 goals. Part of that is a result of losing Connor Hellebuyck, but the team has also stumbled onto some depth scoring issues. As for Toronto and Vancouver, no teams saw a bigger drop in Defensive Rating. Calgary is mostly irrelevant in the playoff race, but the team’s inability to finish meant the Flames had the second-biggest drop in Offensive Rating.

To sum it up: the Oilers aren’t a contender anymore, the Jets are a mess without Hellebuyck, the Leafs and Canucks can’t defend and the Flames can’t score. Woof. One month ago, Canada had a 22 percent chance of ending the country’s Stanley Cup drought. That’s down to eight percent now.

Detroit Red Wings

The Red Wings were on the rise to start the season, but have fallen back down to earth in November after a disappointing 4-6-2 run against the third-easiest schedule. That’s dropped Detroit’s playoff chances substantially by 28 percentage points.

That may not feel totally fair for a club that has shown some progress this season. The stars have never shone brighter and the team has improved its xG percentage from 47.4 percent to 50.5 percent this year. The Red Wings should be better than this. The level they should be better, though, is up for debate and there should be real concern about the team’s finishing and goaltending.

Detroit finished 26th in five-on-five shooting percentage last season and are 32nd this season. There’s room for improvement, but we’re also seeing an increased sample of a systemic issue, one brought about by weak depth and a coach with a history of stifling offense. In his five years with the Kings, Todd McLellan’s teams were the worst finishing teams over the entire stretch, finishing 26th, 23rd, 32nd, 24th and 31st. They rank 18th since his departure.

As for the goaltending, the Red Wings are getting what you’d expect out of a Cam Talbot and John Gibson tandem: Roughly bottom-five goaltending. 

The Red Wings’ goals percentage should regress, it’s just difficult to imagine it’ll be toward a playoff-calibre level. They have the third-hardest remaining schedule which could also make the road ahead difficult.

Utah Mammoth

The Mammoth have been a roller coaster to start the season. They looked like the next big thing to start, but have stumbled, going 3-6-3 since the last Playoff Report. During that time, they managed a 50.7 percent xG rate — fine, but not up to the standard they set to start the season.

As it turns out, it probably wasn’t safe to expect Nick Schmaltz to suddenly be a 100-point scorer and he was especially disappointing over the last month with just four points in 12 games. He wasn’t the only one, as the team’s high-flying top six all slowed down aside from Logan Cooley. Clayton Keller had seven points in 12 games, Barrett Hayton was a complete non-factor while both Dylan Guenther and JJ Peterka mustered only six points. Add a disappointing month from Mikhail Sergachev and the team’s budding star core hit a roadblock.

It’s that point that’s at the heart of the issue in Utah and is the team started the season on the bubble. Until the team’s stars prove they can consistently bring it at a high level, the core falls well behind what the best of the West have to offer.

New York Rangers

Over the first month, the Rangers were controlling play to an elite degree, but weren’t getting the bounces. Now they’re getting the bounces, but struggling to control play. The Rangers have had a difficult time getting everything going at once and the longer it goes on, the harder it is to believe in the underlying talent.

With the Rangers under Mike Sullivan, the biggest question is whether this team can score enough. A lot of the top six got back on track in November, but the rest of the team is a mess. The Rangers’ top six scored 30 goals in November, the rest of the team combined for 10 — and that’s led by three goals from defensive defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov. That’s led to some downgrades where the team’s bottom six now has a projected Offensive Rating of minus-45, the worst mark in the league.

Add an Adam Fox injury to that and the Rangers’ playoff hopes are starting to slip away.

Honorable mention: Remember last time when I wrote that the model still believed in the St. Blues Blues after a tepid start because of strong underlying numbers? Yeah, throw that out the window. The Blues received the third strongest downgrade in November as their xG over the month plummeted to 47 percent.

Here’s how the league’s landscape has changed over the past month.