How Good Do The Blackhawks Need To Be To Make The Playoffs?

The Chicago Blackhawks season has not been great. While the season is not over yet, the past few losses definitely show that this season is over for a competitive Hawks team. Tanking is not really a question considering the team does not have their first-round draft pick. So the team is going to have to keep trying to play some competitive hockey this season.

The Blackhawks' current record is 11-17-4, giving them 26 points through the first 32 games of the season. Finding a way to finish 500 might be a better conversation than finding how good they need to be to make the playoffs, but here we are. With the first 32 games gone the team has 50 games to go to make up a lot of points in the standings.

In the past few seasons, the judgment bar for a playoff team has been 95 points. I am going to keep the number there, but realistically this season we could see better teams than that miss out on the postseason.

For the Blackhawks to get to 95 points they need 69 points during the coming months. They have 50 games to get there so if they were to capture all their remaining points - aka win 50 games straight, they would pick up 100 points in the standings. They need to capture 72 percent of their remaining points available which comes out to one heck of a win percentage compared to where the team has been through the first half of the season.

The Blackhawks would need to win more than 35 games to hit that 95 point mark, which means their record would need to look something like 35-10-5 through the remainder of the season. Considering the team is currently 11-17-4, I do not think that is at all possible for them at this time.

According to HockeyViz, the Blackhawks have a 7.7 percent chance at making the playoffs at this time. That number is most likely going to continue to go down as the year continues until it hits zero later in the season. At least the team has a lot of players they can move to bring in some prospects and draft picks ahead of the trade deadline.