Lawless: October Matters

October can be a fickle flip of the calendar in the NHL.

But a team would be wary to ignore the realities of the opening month. It can make a team as well as break a team.

For the Vegas Golden Knights, the opening 13 games of this season have been mostly positive. But the next two outings will determine whether this group finishes the opening stanza with an excellent grade or something a little less sparkling.

At 8-4-1 the Golden Knights can boast top-five status in the NHL. But the NHL is an every-night league, and such billing can be fleeting. Greed is good in a league where wins and points are concerned and the more a team can bank early the better.

A strong start ensures nothing. But it’s more probable to maintain a playoff pace than to climb from the dregs. Facts are stubborn things and the numbers lay out an obvious case.

October has a lot to say about which of the NHL’s 32 teams qualify for the post-season. Roughly 27.8 percent of teams that are out of a playoff spot on Nov. 1 find a way back in by the end of the regular season. And the farther back a team is from the playoff line, those percentages drop. For teams that are at least four points out of a playoff spot on November 1, only 12 to 14 percent historically make the climb over the playoff line and qualify under the wild-card format.

Any high school student will tell you it’s easier to keep an A than move up from a C to an A as the semester wanes. The NHL isn’t much different.

Injuries and adversity are coming. Guaranteed. The NHL regular season, now stretched to 84 games, is a most rigorous test. After winning the Stanley Cup in 2012 with the Los Angeles Kings, coach Darryl Sutter remarked that getting into the Stanley Cup Playoffs is more difficult than actually winning the title. Sutter’s team squeaked in as the eighth seed and then got on a roll. The regular season separates the wheat from the chaff in the NHL.

Vegas broke out to an 8-2 start before dropping its last three games. Veteran defenseman Brayden McNabb says teams employ both little and big picture perspectives.

“In the moment it’s all about the next game. But you do talk about big picture with the group,” said McNabb. “It was discussed in camp that we wanted to have a good start to the year. And we have. The last little bit has been a tough stretch but it’s all fixable stuff and we will be better going forward.”

Vegas lost 2-1 in overtime to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday but McNabb says there were positive signs for his group despite the defeat.

“It’s just playing as five in all three zones. If we do that, we’re a pretty hard team to beat. Not getting stubborn with the puck, making life easy on everyone by doing your own job,” he said. “When we do that, it looks like a pretty good team and we did that in the third period in Columbus.”

Vegas hosts the Ottawa Senators tonight and then the New Jersey Devils on Friday.