The NHL’s 2024-25 campaign has seen a changing of the guard in the Eastern Conference. The two teams that dominated last year, the New York Rangers and Boston Bruins, are struggling mightily and out of playoff spots more than halfway through the season.
Meanwhile, the Washington Capitals and Toronto Maple Leafs have replaced them at the top of the conference, and two new teams — the Ottawa Senators and Columbus Blue Jackets — have entered the East’s wild card race.
The chaos has caused, as ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski pointed out on X Monday, some very interesting matchups if the playoffs started today.
If going by points percentage, these would be the Eastern Conference playoff matchups in the first round.
East playoff series (as of 1/14/25)
MD1 – Washington Capitals (1st best points percentage)
WC2 – Columbus Blue Jackets (8th)
MD2 – Carolina Hurricanes (3rd)
MD3 – New Jersey Devils (4th)
AD1 – Toronto Maple Leafs (2nd)
WC1 – Ottawa Senators (7th)
AD2 – Florida Panthers (5th)
AD3 – Tampa Bay Lightning (6th)
If the Blue Jackets can hold onto the second wild card spot, they will make the playoffs for the first time since 2019–20 when they upset the Toronto Maple Leafs (3-2) in the qualifying round of the bubble playoffs. The last time Columbus played the Capitals in the playoffs was in 2018 when the Capitals fought back from a 0-2 deficit to take the series 4-2 in the first round after Braden Holtby was reinserted as the team’s starting goaltender. The Capitals went on to win the Stanley Cup that year.
This season, the Blue Jackets are led by a balanced offensive attack with seven different players scoring 10 or more goals — Kirill Marchenko (18), Dmitri Voronkov (17), Sean Monahan (14), Zach Werenski (13), Kent Johnson (11), Mathieu Olivier (10), and Adam Fantilli (10) — 43 games into their schedule. Werenski, the team’s number-one defenseman, leads the team in total points with 48.
In net, the Blue Jackets are a mess as the team’s two main goaltenders — Elvis Merzlikins and Daniil Tarasov — have goals-against averages over 3.00 and save percentages under .900. According to Money Puck, Tarasov has the third-worst goals saved above expected mark in the league at -10.5 while Merzlikins is twelfth-worst at -6.2. Merlikins, though, has managed to jump out to a 15-10-3 record despite his woes.
The young Blue Jackets, led by former Capitals assistant Dean Evason, are on a four-game winning streak and have jumped into the second wild card spot after going 7-2-1 in their last 10 games. Their minus-two goal differential is eighth best in the conference.
The Capitals have already defeated the Blue Jackets twice this season — once at Nationwide Arena and the other at Capital One Arena. In those two games, Washington outscored Columbus 9-3.
The Blue Jackets making the playoffs is not a lock, as nine teams in the East are within six standings points of each other, battling for two wild card spots. The Boston Bruins, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, Pittsburgh Penguins, Philadelphia Flyers, New York Rangers, and New York Islanders are all on the outside looking in by points percentage.
The Capitals currently have a five-point lead over the New Jersey Devils, with two games in hand for the top spot in the Metropolitan Division.
