Welcome to the Stanley Cup Playoffs Buzz, a daily look at the races for the 2026 NHL postseason.<\/p>\n
There are five days left in the regular season and the races for playoff spots and seeding are heating up. The top three teams in each of the four divisions and the next two highest-place finishers in each conference reach the playoffs.<\/p>\n
Here is a look at the NHL standings<\/a> and everything else that could impact the playoff picture.<\/p>\n Clinching scenarios<\/p>\n WESTERN CONFERENCE<\/p>\n The Anaheim Ducks will clinch a playoff berth:<\/p>\n If they defeat the Vancouver Canucks in any fashion (8 p.m. ET; KTTV, Victory+, SNP).<\/p>\n On Tap<\/p>\n There are six games on the NHL schedule Sunday, all with playoff implications:<\/p>\n Pittsburgh Penguins at Washington Capitals (3 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, MNMT, truTV, TNT, SN360, TVAS)<\/p>\n The Metropolitan Division rivals play the second of a home-and-home set after the Capitals won 6-3 on Saturday. Pittsburgh played without forwards Sidney Crosby<\/a> (lower body), Evgeni Malkin<\/a>\u00a0(upper body), Bryan Rust<\/a>\u00a0(lower body) and Ben Kindel (upper body), and defensemen Erik Karlsson<\/a> (lower body), Kris Letang<\/a> (upper body) and Parker Wotherspoon<\/a>\u00a0(upper body). Each is considered day to day. If Crosby plays, it will mark the 100th all-time meeting between the Penguins captain and Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin<\/a>. The latter hasn’t decided whether he will play beyond this season, so this could be the last chance to see the rivals go head-to-head. The Capitals (41-30-9) are 6-2-0 in their past eight games but will be eliminated from playoff contention with a regulation loss to the Penguins. They’re five points behind the Boston Bruins for the second wild card from the Eastern Conference. The Penguins (41-23-16) are 5-2-0 in their past seven and locked into second in their division.<\/p>\n Montreal Canadiens at New York Islanders (6 p.m. ET; MSGSN, TSN2, RDS)<\/p>\n Nick Suzuki<\/a>\u00a0needs one point to become the first Canadiens player to reach 100 in a season since\u00a0Mats\u00a0Naslund (110) in 1985-86. The Montreal captain (28 goals, 71 assists) would also like to see his team keep pace with the Tampa Bay Lightning for second in the Atlantic Division. Montreal (47-23-10) is third since Tampa Bay holds the regulation-wins tiebreaker (40-33). Islanders rookie defenseman Matthew Schaefer<\/a> needs one goal to pass Brian Leetch<\/a>\u00a0(23 in 1988-89) and set a new NHL record for the most in a season by a rookie at the position. The Islanders (43-32-5) will be eliminated from contention with either a regulation loss, or an overtime or shootout loss and if the Columbus Blue Jackets get at least one point against the Boston Bruins and the Capitals get at least one point against the Penguins, or if the Blue Jackets defeat the Bruins in any fashion and the Capitals defeat the Penguins in any fashion. New York has lost five of six and is sixth in the Metropolitan Division, three points behind the third-place Philadelphia Flyers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to the Stanley Cup Playoffs Buzz, a daily look at the races for the 2026 NHL postseason.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[2210,233,5292,1739,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-551246","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim-ducks","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-ducks","10":"tag-anaheimducks","11":"tag-ducks","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116392726607124092","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}