How the NHL’s U.S. Thanksgiving secret became part of hockey’s DNA

Editor’s note: U.S. Thanksgiving is a traditional checkpoint for NHL teams to gauge how they’re doing. In this week’s Proudfoot Corner on the story behind the story, we look at how this holiday marker — coming up Thursday — became a regular topic of conversation.

I remember sitting with Ken Holland, then general manager of the Detroit Red Wings, at dinner in the old Joe Louis Arena at some point during the 2009 playoffs. He can be quite chatty, and I was quite happy to listen.

We were talking about the league and how a GM makes trades, and judges a team, when he told me something I hadn’t heard before: that they typically decide at U.S. Thanksgiving whether they are good enough to make the Stanley Cup playoffs and will be buyers or sellers by the deadline.

It was more or less a corporate secret back then. They didn’t tell fans — losing teams still have to sell tickets, by selling hope — but at roughly the quarter-point of the season their playoff chances became clear.

He challenged me to look it up, and he was right.

On Nov. 24, 2010 with the Maple Leafs off to a slow start, we published a story headlined: “Statistics show Leafs playoff chances slim.”

They were outside a playoff spot then, and history showed they’d be unlikely to make up any ground. We nicknamed it Bleak Thursday (the day before Black Friday).

We went back 15 seasons, and NHL teams in a playoff spot at Thanksgiving actually made the post-season 77.5 per cent of the time. Only three teams a year — sometimes four, sometimes two — typically gain enough ground to get in. It almost makes the remaining 60-odd games seem pointless, although there have been noteworthy comebacks — especially the Cup champion St. Louis Blues in 2019.

I’ve continued to track it, and the numbers remain true. Last season, 12 of 16 teams kept their spots with Columbus, Vegas, Anaheim and Winnipeg replaced by Boston, Colorado, Nashville and Los Angeles.

It was a stats-based story in 2010. Now pretty much everybody in the NHL talks about why the standings are important this time of year.

No one was talking about it until Holland said the quiet part out loud. Funny what you can learn just by listening to one of the game’s best GMs.

On the Corner

It’s always nice to see familiar names pop up in Proudfoot Corner. This week, we have an abundance of long-time supporters. Jeanne Scott of Whitby gives $25 … Paul and Liz Roden of Weston donate $100 ... From Toronto, we have Elisabeth Stewart with $50 in memory of Sally Dalrymple; John Arrabito sends $35 in memory of Angelo Arrabito; Debra Hanna with $100 in memory of Bill Hanna; John Gelmon with $600 in memory of former Toronto Star city editor Joseph N. Gelmon; and Larry Bilokrely, who gives $61 in memory of Bob Bilokrely, “a great Red Wings fan” ... Sally Hardman of North York sends $105 in memory of “my dear husband Allen”… Edgar Goodaire of Niagara Falls gives $105 in memory of Timothy Edgar … Ken O’Connor from Scarborough delivers $70 on behalf of the field hockey community … Sharon Alderdice of North York gives $100 in memory of Roy Alderdice, who was also a Corner supporter .. Newbies in the Corner are Kathleen Case of Toronto, with $100, and David Clark of Mississauga, who gives $40 in memory of “my dad, Leonard Clark” and another $40 in memory of the Corner’s namesake, Jim Proudfoot.

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Kevin McGran is a Star sports reporter based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @kevin_mcgran