With the National Hockey League’s trade deadline officially behind us, focus now shifts to the playoff race and the bid for those final wild-card slots.

Both conferences have deep races for their two respective spots, owing largely to the NHL’s scoring system that awards points for overtime and shootout losses.

A large swath of teams remain in contention, and the calibre of these teams ranges greatly.

We can only reasonably cross off three East teams at this point: the Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Buffalo Sabres. That’s it, with only 20 per cent of the regular season remaining.

There’s a similar story in the West. I wrote early in the season the Western Conference playoff race was really just about the final wild-card spot, as the top-heaviness of the conference was sure to entrench the elite teams early. That’s still the case today — we can only cross off five teams right now, from the plucky Anaheim Ducks to the dead-last San Jose Sharks. Everyone else is alive.

The beauty of the Stanley Cup Playoffs is upsets do happen from time to time; the last thing a divisional winner wants to see in a first-round draw is a wild-card team that’s getting hot at the right time, or a team that’s shown well against better competition.

To that end, I wanted to see how our remaining wild-card competitors have performed against playoff-calibre clubs. The below tables show the performance of the wild-card hopefuls against the entrenched 14 playoff teams, as well as a check on........

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