Something which has long confounded me about the NHL is why so many teams are willing to put themselves in the playoff conversation (often through media proxies, but not always) if they’re five or six points out of the playoffs at the start of February. On some level, it’s easy to say it’s because so many coaches’ and even GMs’ jobs are on the line if their teams fail to make the playoffs, and that certainly seems like it plays into it. Because unlike, say, the NBA where tanking is de rigueur and seen as a good and smart strategy for improving, making the playoffs matters a lot to teams on the fringes.
