With the 2025/26 NHL Season reaching its apex, the race for the playoffs is now on. And out West, it’s an absolute knife fight. 
One wildcard spot remains in the Western Conference. Just one. Colorado, Dallas, Minnesota, Anaheim, Vegas, and Edmonton methodically locked their division rungs months ago. Utah has seemingly clinched the first wildcard with white knuckles. What’s left – the final seat on this plane east – has four franchises scratching and clawing toward April 16th.
Seattle currently holds WC2 with 71 points, ahead of the Los Angeles Kings, courtesy of their superior points differential. One behind sits San Jose, while Nashville is just three points further back. A good handful of games remain. Every night from here on out is elimination hockey. But who will outlast the rest and punch their tickets to the postseason?
San Jose Sharks
Nobody tanked harder in the offseason narrative than San Jose—and nobody looks more embarrassed by that characterization right now. The Sharks were supposed to be a lottery team. A development sandbox. Instead, they’re sitting at 70 points with a genuine playoff chance that online betting sites refuse to write off. Popular betting site Ozoon Sportsbook currently lists their chances at +105, and the reason for all of it has one name and nineteen years of life experience behind it.
Macklin Celebrini has 95 points in 65 games. Read that again. A teenager on a $975K entry-level deal—a kid who was staring at the Olympics with Canada weeks ago—sits fifth in NHL scoring, factoring into more than half of San Jose’s goals at a rate second league-wide only to Connor McDavid. Can the rookie sensation carry them alone? The goal differential—San Jose’s sitting at -21 —quietly screams the answer every night. When he produces, they win. When he doesn’t, they bleed.
Here’s the brutal truth about San Jose: the supporting cast doesn’t scare anyone. Depth scoring is theoretical. The goaltending won’t win a series. And now, with the hockey world laser-focused on his every shift, defensive coaches in Nashville and Seattle and Los Angeles are designing systems specifically to clog Celebrini’s preferred lanes.
His summer extension negotiation—the most anticipated signing in Sharks history—looms like a subplot nobody can ignore. But first: back-to-back clashes with fellow wildcard contenders Nashville. Two direct battles against a desperate, star-studded rival that will reveal whether San Jose’s miracle has legs or was always just one teenager upsetting the odds.
Seattle Kraken
At 71 points from 67 games (the regulation wins edge intact), Seattle currently occupies WC2—but 29-26 in regulation and a .900 team save percentage don’t exactly project the image of a franchise destined for deep postseason runs. The Kraken can score in bunches. They can’t grind out a 1-0 win on a Tuesday in March when the other team’s getting desperate.
Then came Bobby McMann. The deadline acquisition from Toronto arrived in Seattle and immediately started producing—five points in his first two games, a pace so absurd it felt like the universe’s way of rewarding Ron Francis for swinging the deal. McMann’s 19 goals in 60 games with the Leafs made him an obvious fit; his early-season production in teal has electrified a forward group that desperately needed someone who wins battles in the corners and makes something happen when the power play sputters.
Matty Beniers (43 points) grinds. McCann surges when healthy. Vince Dunn quarterbacks the power play. But McMann’s the wildcard within the wildcard, the X-factor who could be the difference between a first-round matchup and an early trip to Cancun.
Seattle lost to the Predators a couple of weeks ago in a gut-punch 4-2 collapse despite a two-goal lead, Saros making 43 saves, and Nash scoring four unanswered to hand the Kraken their third straight loss. That memory lives in a locker room, and the Kraken will have to somehow put it in the rearview mirror.
Los Angeles Kings
Fifteen overtime losses. Fifteen. The Kings just don’t play in overtime, and it’s a disorder that’s actively costing them a playoff spot. They’re competitive for sixty minutes almost every single night; they just can’t close the show. Adrian Kempe is having his best season in a Kings uniform, north of 58 points and ascending. Brandt Clarke has emerged as a legitimate top-pairing defenseman—37 points, genuine two-way reliability, the kind of breakout that GMs dream about when they draft in the first round. And then Kevin Fiala went down.
The Olympics collision that fractured his leg didn’t just eliminate his 40 points in 56 games—it cratered LA’s second line, gutted their power play, and handed their most dangerous secondary scoring option directly to the injured reserve. Anze Kopitar’s carefully managed minutes reflect the unspoken truth inside the organization: they’re protecting a veteran’s body for a playoff run that they’re not certain they’ll reach. They can scheme. They can skate. They still can’t win in regulation—and that regulation wins tiebreaker puts them behind Seattle in the standings right now.
Nashville Predators
The Predators’ situation is genuinely maddening. Ryan O’Reilly at 61 points. Filip Forsberg at 53. Steven Stamkos—who earlier this season climbed into NHL all-time goals history and seems constitutionally incapable of not producing—at 51. Roman Josi anchoring everything from the blue line at 44 points despite a stretch of injury absences. It’s the most decorated bubble attack in hockey, a forward group that would terrify first-round opponents if it ever made it there.
They’ve allowed 224 goals, worst of the four contenders by a country mile. The defensive structure just doesn’t exist, and the man between the pipes isn’t inspiring much confidence either. Juuse Saros, who was once the best goaltender in the Western Conference, who won 43 saves in that gutting win over Seattle on March 10th, but whose overall numbers this season have been the goalie carousel nightmare that haunts Nashville’s entire campaign. Will he rediscover the elite form that made him a franchise cornerstone? He’s shown flashes—that 43-save performance wasn’t a fluke—but consistency has been the rarest commodity behind this porous backend all year.
Nashville heads to Seattle and faces San Jose in the coming weeks in must-win clashes. Then, they face a back-to-back series against the Kings. Those contests will make or break their entire season. The star power’s there, but the defense and netminding need to find their feet quickly if the Preds are to have any hope.
Photo Credit: Jack.Lima@prohockeynews.com
