Christmas may be new Thanksgiving as NHL playoff barometer

For the better part of two decades since the NHL instituted a salary cap, enjoying turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes were synonymous with feeling pretty good about making the playoffs.

Dating to 2005-06, with lockout- and pandemic-related seasons excepted, 76% of teams in a playoff spot by the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday wound up qualifying. It became such a popular narrative it began to seep into coaches’ offices and locker rooms based on the odds alone.

Maybe not this year. Thanks to the season starting later than normal, many contenders still trying to find a groove amid various injuries and expansion to 32 teams also makes it inherently harder to make the playoffs.

The Christmas break may be a better for barometer for who’s playing for the Stanley Cup beginning in April.

“This is the year where I don’t know if it’s going to correlate — I think there might be a little bit of a wrench in that,” longtime player and coach Rick Tocchet said. “This is a little goofy season. I don’t think you can have that barometer. I think you have to wait a little bit longer.”

Already in the week since Thanksgiving, the top eight teams in the Western Conference have changed out, with Calgary and St. Louis for Edmonton and Minnesota. While New Jersey is starting to look like the real deal, Detroit remains a bit surprisingly in a playoff spot in the East — with Washington, Florida and others on the outside looking in.

Capitals coach Peter Laviolette acknowledged the history of teams riding a good Thanksgiving spot into the playoffs. But, he points out, “I know teams have made it to the playoffs and played for Cups from behind the line.”

He did it with Philadelphia in 2009-10, inheriting the 22nd-place team in the league in December and taking it to the final. But the reality is that’s more the exception than the rule.

“There’s something to it,” Washington center Lars Eller said. “You don’t want to be chasing. You want to be in a good position early. You…