Postseason Bracket Predictions 18 Days From the 2024 NHL Playoffs

These are big days for hockey fans.

We've officially turned into the calendar month in which the NHL's 2023-24 regular season will end, which can only mean that the postseason is imminent.

Eighteen days away, to be exact.

And as teams jockey for Presidents' Trophy honors, division-winner plaudits and home-ice advantage on the top halves of the Eastern and Western conference brackets, the flip sides feature teams making late charges to try to get themselves into the mix.

Just ask the Boston Bruins how that can turn out.

Put it all together and it's high time for the B/R hockey team to put on its collective fortune-telling hat and forecast not only the entire list of eight first-round series that'll begin on April 20 but also the winners of those prospective matchups.

Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought of your own in the comments.

OK, tell us again how Florida is not a "real" hockey market.

Not only has the Sunshine State produced the Eastern Conference representative in each of the last four Stanley Cup Finals—including two trophy hoists—it'd also be pretty easy to find folks who'd suggest that streak will reach five by the time the title round starts this June.

What's not quite so easy, though, is deciding between (metro) Miami and Tampa.

The Florida Panthers are the reigning conference champs and in the mix to win another Presidents' Trophy thanks to a season's worth of success, while the Tampa Bay Lightning have been the league's best team (based on points percentage) since March 1.

The teams met in consecutive postseasons in 2021 and 2022 with the Lightning winning both times, once in six games and once in a sweep. Meanwhile, they've played three times this season with the Panthers winning 3-2 and 9-2 on the road and losing 5-3 at home.

It's awfully tempting to go with Tampa Bay based on recent pedigree and all-time results, and goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy is surely capable of stealing a series, but this Florida team has looked like a Cup contender all season and it's unlikely that the run will end so abruptly.

Prediction: Panthers in 6

What more could a purist fan ask for?

Two Original Six teams. Two hockey-crazed cities. Two passionate fanbases.

Which means one will be blissful a few weeks from now after eliminating a traditional rival and the other will be suggesting all manner of overhaul from the coach to the backup goalie.

Welcome to Boston and Toronto, NHL style.

The Bruins and Maple Leafs reached April ranked third (tie) and 10th in the league's overall standings and first and third, respectively, in an uber-competitive Atlantic Division. It's the guess here that the Florida Panthers (with a game in hand entering Monday) will overtake Boston down the stretch to finish first, leaving us with a pair of tasty first-rounders.

Toronto won eight of 10 playoff series between the teams before and during the Original Six, but it's been a different story since, with the Bruins taking each of the last six meetings including a seven-gamer when they met in the first round of the 2019 tournament. That dominance has continued into the 2023-24 regular season as well, with Boston winning each of the four games while holding a potent Maple Leafs offense to just seven goals.

Can that continue? Possibly. Will it continue? We say...no.

Both teams were 8-5-1 across 14 games in March while posting identical 2.79 goals-against averages. The difference, again, is in the offense, where Toronto averaged 3.43 goals per game to the Bruins' 2.93. Given the consistent production in their top six, including a guy who's on pace to reach 68 goals by April 18, it's hard to visualize the Maple Leafs being completely shut down across seven straight games.

Auston Matthews breaks a lot of ties, figuratively and literally.

Prediction: Maple Leafs in 7

Warning: Fans of the Detroit Red Wings may want to click through.

Though Steve Yzerman's master-planned team sat two points behind the Philadelphia Flyers for the final Eastern wild-card position heading into Monday's games and the Flyers had won just three times (in regulation) in their last 10 games, it's not as if Detroit was streaking.

The Red Wings, in fact, were the league's 30th-best team in March, going 3-9-2 across 14 games and losing five standings points to Philadelphia, which was a pedestrian 5-7-3 in 15.

Couple that with Detroit's harder remaining schedule—which included games with four current playoff teams (entering Monday) to the Flyers' two—and it becomes easier to envision a path that'll have John Tortorella going head-to-head against a former employer.

All that said, we don't expect the Black and Orange to stay at the dance too long.

Their would-be path would mean a first-round matchup with a top-seeded New York Rangers team that was 10-3-1 in March, first overall in the league to begin April, and eager to lose the taste of last spring's disappointing first-round loss to geographic rival New Jersey.

It'd be the first Rangers-Flyers playoff series since 2014, when New York won a seven-gamer that kick-started its run to the Cup final. Philadelphia hasn't beaten the kings of Broadway since its own run to the final in 1997 and hasn't beaten them at all in 2023-24, losing all three games by a combined score of 11-7.

Sorry, Torts. Hope we can still be friends.

Prediction: Rangers in 5

You've got to give it up for the Washington Capitals.

Alex Ovechkin and Co. appeared dead and buried playoff-wise as the calendar reached March, given their position five points below the then-Eastern wild-card cut line.

But a 9-5-1 run through the season's final full month changed all that and Washington reached April having climbed past Detroit and Philadelphia and into third in the Metropolitan Division. Presuming it plays at or near that .633 clip through the final nine games, it'd be headed straight toward a first-round divisional matchup with Carolina.

The Hurricanes have been one of the league's better teams for most of the season and particularly in the calendar 2024 portion, during which their 27-8-3 mark matches the Edmonton Oilers for tops overall in the NHL. It may not be enough to catch an equally scalding Rangers team down the stretch to win the Metropolitan, but they would have home-ice advantage against the Capitals, who started April 19 points behind in the standings.

That's where it gets interesting...sort of.

Washington actually won two of the first three games between the teams this season, taking shootouts in mid-December and late March while dropping a 6-2 decision on January 5. The Capitals will visit Carolina once more, on Friday, in game two of a back-to-back that starts with a home game against Pittsburgh on Thursday.

Ovechkin scored a goal and assisted on another in his most recent date with the Hurricanes on March 22 but had been goal-less through the first two games. Keeping No. 8 off the score sheet is a winning strategy against Washington and it bodes well over a prolonged series.

Prediction: Hurricanes in 6

How about a matchup between the hottest team in the league and the team that'd held that distinction until the final few days of March?

We'll take it, thanks.

The Dallas Stars won their final seven games of March to move into first place in the Central Division and the No. 1 spot in the Western Conference, and we're forecasting a first-round matchup with the Nashville Predators, who sit seventh in the conference at the moment but could slide behind the Los Angeles Kings, who are three points behind with a game in hand.

The Stars and Predators split four meetings in the regular season with Dallas holding Nashville to fewer than 30 shots three times. It won two of those three games, including a 9-2 rout on February 15. The Predators didn't lose in regulation for their next 18 games after that one, going 16-0-2 before dropping consecutive decisions to Arizona and Colorado last week.

Nashville's 2.40 goals-against average since the mid-February loss is tied for third in the league and it'd be a go-to stat for those forecasting an upset, given Jake Oettinger's up-and-down performance in the Stars' net for most of the season. But Oettinger has been strong down the stretch as well—11-4-2 in his last 17 starts—and Dallas' GAA of 2.67 since the mid-February win is sixth in the league, effectively eliminating it as a harbinger of doom.

The teams have met in the playoffs just once, in 2019, and the Stars' six-game win in that one seems about right when it comes to picking this one.

Prediction: Stars in 6

It wouldn't be a reach to insist that the Colorado Avalanche will continue a recent hot streak—8-1-1 in their last 10 games—and work their way into a Central Division title by season's end.

But we'd go along with it a lot easier if the team they were chasing, the Dallas Stars, weren't on a certifiable roll of their own with seven straight wins and a 7-2-1 mark in their last 10.

So that means the Avalanche will have to be satisfied with second place, which in this case would mean a first-round date with the Winnipeg Jets.

The Jets, Stars and Avalanche have each been in spots one, two and three in the division in recent weeks, with Winnipeg falling to third just recently amid a stretch in which it's gone 3-6-1 and had dropped two straight heading into a Monday date with Los Angeles.

That'd be even worse news for the Jets had they not handled Colorado in two regular-season meetings with goalie Connor Hellebuyck stopping 62 of 66 shots (.939 save percentage). They'll meet once more, on April 13 in Denver, and this one feels like the series in every postseason round in which a goalie is the No. 1 story.

Spoiler alert...it probably won't be Alex Georgiev.

Prediction: Jets in 7

The Vancouver Canucks opened the 2023-24 schedule with back-to-back wins over Edmonton in which they outscored the powerful Oilers by a 12-4 margin.

And for those waiting for it to be revealed as a mirage...well, you're still waiting.

Instead, coach Rick Tocchet and Co. maintained their elite status in the Pacific all season and seem poised to close out with a division title even though those Oilers had closed to within six points (plus two games in hand and a head-to-head matchup remaining) by Monday.

Presuming Vancouver does wrap things up across its final eight games, we're suggesting the No. 2 seed it'll yield will mean a first-round duel with division rival Los Angeles, which reached April as the West's second wild card but could soon close the gap on Nashville.

The Kings were expected to be in a better spot coming off two straight playoff appearances and a 2022-23 regular season that saw them finish 21 points ahead of the Canucks. But they've been inconsistent all season and there's no bigger question than in goal, where Cam Talbot has been good in most spots but quite suspect in others.

Nevertheless, Los Angeles did win two of the first three games in a season series that'll wrap up on Saturday, and Talbot has been very good in all of them, stopping 73 of the 78 shots for a .936 save percentage that's 20 points better than his overall numbers through 47 games.

He's not been as successful with W's and L's as Vancouver's Thatcher Demko (23-17-6 to Demko's 34-13-2), but his goals-against average (2.44 to 2.47) and save percentage (.916 to .917) numbers entering Monday are pretty similar, and the fact that Demko's been out since March 9 with a lower-body injury might tip the scales toward an upset.

Of course, if Talbot is shaky and gives way to the likes of David Rittich and Pheonix Copley at any point during the series, this conversation never happened.

Prediction: Kings in 6

When it comes to a potential duel with the Vegas Golden Knights in the playoffs, fans of the Edmonton Oilers can be divided into two camps.

One, still smarting from last season's second-round ouster by the eventual Cup champs, would sooner see a team full of NHL all-stars on the opposite bench than have to deal with Jack Eichel again. But the other wants nothing more than a rematch where a win would provide both advancement to the second round and a boatload of confidence.

The latter is especially pertinent for a team with a checkered history come April and beyond as these Oilers have, with just four series wins in the Connor McDavid era and just two more seasons remaining (and one for Leon Draisaitl) on his current contract.

Every team wants to win now. But perhaps none need to more than Edmonton.

The teams have split two games thus far in 2023-24—the Oilers won 5-4 in November and Vegas won 3-1 in February—and they'll play once more on April 10 at Rogers Place, where Edmonton's 25-8-3 record entering Monday is fourth-best in the league.

The Oilers would have home ice in a would-be first-rounder, and it'd be there where the deadline deals for Adam Henrique and Sam Carrick, designed to provide two-way play and depth scoring in the bottom six, would be put a pertinent test against a Golden Knights team that got goals from 11 players across six games last spring.

It'd be another chance, too, for Edmonton goalie Stuart Skinner, whose .875 save percentage in the 2023 series was well below his .914 mark for the regular season. He was badly outplayed by Adin Hill, but Hill has made just 32 starts this season and hasn't played since making a save with his left pad in a March 23 game against Columbus.

If he's not 100 percent or has to turn things over to Logan Thompson or Jiri Patera for an extended stretch, go ahead and pencil in the tiebreaker for next year's tournament.

Prediction: Oilers in 6