Elimination from Playoff Race Looms for Penguins

Of course, the Penguins sitting out the postseason again been all but guaranteed for quite a few weeks — perhaps even longer — but the season has progressed to a point where it’s become a mathematical inevitability.

In the wake of their 5-4 overtime loss in St. Louis Thursday, the Penguins are 30-34-12, which translates to 72 points.

They have six games remaining in the regular season, which means they would finish with 84 points if they go 6-0 the rest of the way, beginning with a visit to Dallas Saturday afternoon.

Montreal, which has 81 points, currently holds the second wild-card slot in the Eastern playoff field.

Without factoring the first tiebreaker — regulation victories — into the calculation, the Canadiens can formally dismiss the Penguins from playoff contention by earning four points in their final seven games. (For the record, Montreal holds a 26-20 edge in that tiebreaker.)

The New York Rangers, who have 79 points with seven games remaining, and Columbus, which has 77 with eight to go,  are the clubs who pose the biggest threat to the Canadiens’ chances of securing a spot in the postseason. Both have leads over the Penguins in the regulation-victories tiebreaker.

This will be the third consecutive spring in which the Penguins miss the playoffs, which will be one of the longest streaks of futility in franchise history.

Their longest was six years, running from 1983 to 1988, inclusive. That streak included Mario Lemieux’s first four years in the NHL.

They also had a four-season drought from 2002 to 2006. (That’s five years, but there were no playoffs in 2005 because the season was wiped out by a labor dispute).

The Penguins’ only other multiple-season dry spells lasted two years each: 1968-1969 and 1973-74.

They had qualified for a league-high 16 consecutive springs before failing to get in in 2023. During that time, they won the franchise’s third, four and fifth Stanley Cups, in 2009, 2016 and 2017.