NHL wild card race watch: Blue Jackets surge, Western Conference battle intensifies
In this week’s edition of the wild card race watch, we take a look at the surging Columbus Blue Jackets, as well as the tight race for the second spot in the Western Conference.
NHL wild card race watch: Blue Jackets surge, Western Conference battle intensifies originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here . We’re in the home stretch of the NHL’s 2025-26 regular season, but the playoff picture has yet to come into focus for the teams battling it out for a wild card berth.
Only one point separates the three teams jockeying for the final playoff spot in the West, while the 10th-place Ottawa Senators are just five points back of the two wild card teams in the East. With less than a month remaining until the end of the season, qualifying for the playoffs could come down to the final day. With that said, let’s get down to business and lay out the latest Wild Card Watch: Western Conference: 7th Place – Utah Mammoth (73 points) 76 points 8th Place – Seattle Kraken (67 points) 71 points 9th Place – Los Angeles Kings (67 points) 71 points 10th Place – San Jose Sharks (66 points) 70 points The Lowdown: The same four teams that were in last week’s two wild card spots and the ninth and 10th place are in the same positions this week.
And three of the four teams – the Kraken, Kings and Sharks – all earned four standings points this week, while the Mammoth earned only three points. According to Tankathon , the Kings have the easiest remaining schedule of any team in the league; the Sharks have the fourth-easiest; the Mammoth have the fifth-easiest; and the Kraken have the 14th-easiest, meaning Seattle has the hardest schedule of any of these four teams. MORE : Leon Draisaitl's injury shakes Oilers’ playoff push, raises stakes for Connor McDavid’s future The Sharks have a game in hand on the Kings and Kraken, and San Jose has two games in hand on the Mammoth.
Utah now has only 14 games left to stick the landing and sew up its first post-season berth in the organization’s five-year playoff drought. You’d think that makes the Mammoth the team most desperate for a playoff spot, but the Sharks haven’t made the playoffs for the past six seasons, so San Jose is slightly more desperate than Utah. The teams ahead of the Mammoth, Kraken, Sharks, and Kings at the top of the West are starting to shift around, and there’s an increased possibility that the Dallas Stars wind up as the West’s best team.
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