Now over 40 games have been played in this NHL season, all eyes will be now focused on who will qualify for the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs. Only 16 teams can qualify for the prestigious playoff final, with the top three from each of the four leagues qualifying automatically. The last four places will then be filled by the next two highest placed finishers in each conference when both of their leagues results are combined. So who should your bet be on to win this year’s NHL Stanley Cup? Here are a few of the teams we think are most likely to raise the silverware this year.
If you’re looking for a good return from your bet, you’ll want to look at which teams will qualify through the wildcard system. Two teams with a great chance of qualifying to the final 16 with wildcards are the Ottawa Senators and the Vancouver Canucks. Both teams previously faced each other in the NHL Heritage League when it was last held in Canada in 2014 at the BC Place in Vancouver. If you’re struggling to pick between the two teams, you can find out more about each team’s performance in that game and the rest of their season on the Betting Sports website.
Although Ottawa won that game 4-2, they currently look the less likely of the two to qualify as they are currently 6th in the Atlantic league. Whilst the salary cap continues to level the playing field, the league is so close this year that they are only three points away from an automatic qualification place. Vancouver are currently tied with San Jose for the last qualification place in the Pacific league, so will be a prime candidate for a playoff place if they don’t make it through automatically.
Surprisingly at this late stage of the tournament it’s still difficult to know for sure who will be in those top three automatic qualification places in each league. The only team to have developed a real gap over the rest of their league is Washington. The Capitals have pulled a 16 point gap between them and both New York teams who are in joint second place. Their success is mainly down to Alex Ovechkin, who is already being described as one of the sports all time greats after scoring his 500th career goal earlier this season.
In the Western Conference the best performing team appear to be Dallas and Los Angeles, but their leads are a lot narrower than that held by the Capitals. Despite being only two points ahead of Chicago, this is the Dallas Stars second best season so far in their history. The only Dallas squad to be doing better at this time in the season was the 1998-99 team which went on to win the Stanley Cup. In the Pacific league, Los Angeles Kings are currently 9 points ahead of the rest of the teams. Below them, only 10 points separates second place to last place, so anybody could still qualify for the final playoff.
