How Important Is a Strong Start in the NHL?

Tracking how the best (and worst) teams in the first month of recent seasons have fared by the end of it.

During the first month of an NHL season, we often hear the phrase “It’s early, but (insert talking point).” For that reason, let’s take a look at how important (or unimportant) coming out of the gates red-hot is for a team’s long-term standing.

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How Teams That Start Good & Bad Fare Over an Entire Season

Over the course of an entire season, just how important is it to start off with a bang? How detrimental is starting off slow?

From 2014-15 to 2023-24, below are the top and bottom 10 teams in terms of points percentage (P%) for the first month of their campaign. Each team’s full-season point pace (82 games) is listed, highlighting how well the early risers do in comparison to the ones who fell behind in their first few contests. There’s consistently around a 20-point gap when all is said and done:

The point pace of teams that start the first month of the season in the top 10 versus the bottom 10 of points percentage. From 2014-15 to 2023-24, their 82-game point paces are listed for each of the 10 seasons included. Visual courtesy of Microsoft Excel.

In total, the top 10 teams in the first month put up 100 points per 82 contests, making them largely playoff-bound. Of the 100 squads in the sample, 79 of them made the postseason and four of them won the Stanley Cup. Generally speaking, seven or eight teams are a shoo-in for the postseason during any given campaign when they start out hot. In the sample, there were never fewer than six first-month standouts to qualify for playoff hockey.

On the flip side, the bottom 10 teams were on pace for 81 points per 82 games. Only 28 of the 100 clubs in the sample made the postseason, two of which won the Stanley Cup.

Let’s further quantify these numbers. Over the last 10 seasons, there have been 168 squads that made the postseason (this includes the eight additional play-in round participants during the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs). Based on their first-month P%, I put them into three different categories: top 10, middle 10-12 (the Vegas Golden Knights and Seattle Kraken inflated the number of middle teams to 12 in 2021-22), and bottom 10. What percent of total playoff clubs does each category make up?

All playoff teams since 2014-15 listed by where they ranked in the first month of the season in terms of points percentage. Visual courtesy of Line Graph Maker.

As we can see, starting in the bottom 10 is not quite ideal for teams wanting to make the postseason. Despite the sample sizes being rather small (the first month is never more than a dozen games), almost three times the number of top clubs make the playoffs over the bottom ones. A good October (or January in the case of the COVID-19-shortened 2020-21 campaign) is essential.

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Taking a Deeper Look at the Numbers