A magic number in the NHL playoff race is a compact way of saying how much “good news” your team needs before it mathematically clinches a postseason berth (or a specific seed, depending on context). On The BlueLine, the magic number for making the playoffs in the conference view is framed against the ninth-place team—the first team outside the playoff picture.

Intuition. Think of the magic number as a budget of combined events. Every point your team earns and every point the chasing team fails to earn can chip away at that budget. When it hits zero, no remaining schedule can keep you out of the top eight.

Typical definition (conference wild-card race). One common formulation is:

Magic # = (max points the 9th-place team can still reach) + 1 − (your team’s current points)

That tells you the total points swing still required before you are guaranteed to finish ahead of the cutoff line. In practice, analysts also express magic numbers as “wins by us + losses by them” style combinations because fans reason in games, not abstract points.

Worked example (illustrative). Suppose ninth place can finish with at most 90 points (their current points plus two points for every remaining game). If your team sits at 85 points, the raw gap in points is 90 + 1 − 85 = 6. You need six points of combined progress—maybe you win three games (+6) while ninth place stumbles, or you win two (+4) while they lose twice in regulation (−4 relative to their max), and so on.

*What magic numbers do not tell you. They summarize mathematics, not injuries, schedule difficulty, or momentum. They also simplify tiebreaker chains; if multiple teams are packed tightly, the exact clinch path can be more nuanced than a single headline number suggests.

Why fans use them anyway. Magic numbers turn a noisy standings table into a single line you can update nightly. Pair them with elimination numbers, strength of schedule, and simulation-based playoff odds for a fuller picture.

The BlueLine is an independent NHL analytics site and is not affiliated with the National Hockey League.*