The Calgary Flames entered the 2023-24 season with an impressive roster (on paper), and a lot of challenging decisions to made regarding the future of several key members of that team.
It didn’t turn out terribly well. The Flames got out to a slow start and were chasing a playoff position for the remainder of the year. They were in a playoff spot for nine days, remained a handful of points out for most of the season, and drifted out of the playoff picture after the trade deadline with a depleted roster.
The 2024-25 edition of the Flames are a much different hockey team.
With the teardown complete and all the drama removed, the Flames have just… played hockey this season, and it’s allowed them to not just hang around the playoff picture as they did a year ago, but actually hang around in a playoff spot. Through 112 days of the 2024-25 season, the Flames have spent 81 of them in a playoff spot.
With 80 days remaining on the NHL’s regular season calendar, playing post-season hockey is a legitimate possibility for a team that many in the hockey world thought would be a draft lottery contender instead.
The standings
After Monday’s games, here’s how things stand:
The Flames are 24-17-7, with 55 points in 48 games for a .573 points percentage.
The Canucks are 22-17-10, with 54 points in 49 games for .551 points percentage.
The Flames are one point up on Vancouver with a game in hand. They’re five points up on St. Louis with three games in hand, so all due respect to the Blues, right now it’s probably down to Calgary and Vancouver for the final playoff spot.
Given the Flames’ narrow lead, they don’t need to be amazing down the stretch to make the playoffs: the just need to be better than Vancouver.
So… how possible is that?
Their remaining schedules
Here’s an at-a-glance view of the remaining scheduled for each team, sorted by opponent.
Flames | Opponent | Canucks |
3/12 | Each Other | 3/12 |
1/30, 4/3, 4/9 | Anaheim | 2/27, 3/5, 4/5 |
3/2 | Carolina | – |
– | Chicago | 3/15 |
2/6, 3/14, 3/31 | Colorado | 2/4, 4/10 |
– | Columbus | 3/28 |
3/6, 3/27 | Dallas | 1/31, 3/9, 4/8 |
2/1 | Detroit | 2/2 |
3/29 | Edmonton | – |
3/1 | Florida | – |
4/17 | Los Angeles | 2/26 |
4/11 | Minnesota | 3/7, 4/12 |
3/8 | Montreal | 3/11 |
– | Nashville | 1/29 |
3/20 | New Jersey | 3/24 |
3/22 | NY Islanders | 3/26 |
3/18 | NY Rangers | 3/22 |
3/4 | Philadelphia | – |
2/23, 4/7, 4/13 | San Jose | 2/6, 4/14 |
2/2, 2/8, 3/25 | Seattle | 3/1, 4/2 |
– | St. Louis | 3/20 |
2/27 | Tampa Bay | – |
2/4, 3/17 | Toronto | 2/8 |
4/1 | Utah | 2/23, 3/16 |
4/5, 4/15 | Vegas | 2/22, 4/6, 4/16 |
– | Winnipeg | 3/18, 3/30 |
1/28, 2/25 | Washington | – |
But, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details. So how do the details of each team’s schedules look?
Back-to-backs:
- Calgary has four sets of back-to-backs: Feb. 1 & 2, Mar. 1 & 2, Mar. 17 & 18, and Mar. 31 & Apr. 1.
- Vancouver has five sets of back-to-backs: Feb. 22 & 23, Feb. 26 & 27, Mar. 11 & 12, Mar. 15 & 16, and Apr. 5 & 6.
Scheduled wins:
A “scheduled win” is a game where your team is rested but the other team played the night before.
- Calgary has one scheduled win: Mar. 27 vs. Dallas (they play Edmonton the night before)
- Vancouver has six scheduled wins: Feb. 2 vs. Detroit (they play Calgary the night before), Mar. 5 vs. Anaheim (they play Edmonton the night before), Mar. 9 vs. Dallas (they play Edmonton the night before), Apr. 12 vs. Minnesota (they play Calgary the night before), Apr. 14 vs. San Jose (they play Calgary the night before) and Apr. 16 vs. Vegas (they play Calgary the night before)
Yes, Vancouver’s final three games of the season are against teams playing the second half of back-to-backs after playing the Flames the night before.
Scheduled losses:
A “scheduled loss” is a game where your team played the night before but the other team is rested.
- Calgary has three scheduled losses: Feb. 2, Mar. 18 and Apr. 1.
- Vancouver has three scheduled losses: Feb. 23, Feb. 28 and Mar. 12.
Ignoring quality of competition entirely and looking just at how the games are scheduled – back-to-backs, scheduled wins and scheduled losses – you can make an argument that Vancouver has an easier-looking schedule down the stretch.
The odds
There are a bunch of really smart people that have been fancy algorithms to determine the Flames’ odds of qualifying for the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Heading into Monday’s games – as in, these do not factor in Vancouver’s win over St. Louis – here’s how they looked:
- MoneyPuck: 62.1%
- HockeyViz: 58.0%
- Evolving-Hockey: 43.2%
- The Athletic: 23%
Each of these sources have their own formulas that determine what factors are weighted more than others – MoneyPuck recently adjusted things to emphasize goaltending a bit more – so it’s tough to say that anybody’s right or wrong, since they’re all trying to use different formulas to build a predictive model of perhaps the most chaotic sport to attempt to predict.
But these all say the same thing in different ways: the Flames are very much in the playoff mix.
Just like everybody expected.
We’ll continue to update the playoff race periodically throughout the remainder of the season.
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