Every morning at 9 AM ET we simulate the rest of the NHL, NBA, MLB, and NFL regular seasons 100,000 times each and count how often every team qualifies for the postseason. That share of simulations is the team's playoff probability. Nothing on this site is a human opinion or a betting market price — it is the output of a model whose inputs and error rates we publish in full.
Each team gets one strength rating: how many goals (NHL), points (NBA and NFL), or runs (MLB) better or worse than an average team it is per game, after adjusting for the quality of every opponent it has faced and for where the games were played.
Early in a season a handful of results says little, so every rating starts from a preseason projection — last season's rating pulled a long way back toward average — and moves away from it only as fast as the evidence justifies. A 3-0 start nudges a rating; it does not crown a contender.
A rating is an estimate, not a fact. Before each simulated season the model draws a plausible true strength for every team from the range its results still allow — wide in October, narrow by spring. Averaged over 100,000 seasons, that uncertainty keeps a hot start from reading as a sure thing.
For each remaining game on the real schedule, the two teams' strengths become a win probability that includes home-ice, home-court, or home-field advantage, the cost of the second night of a back-to-back in the NHL and NBA, and neutral sites in the NFL. NHL games that reach overtime award the loser point, and overtime and shootouts are treated as closer to a coin flip than regulation. NFL games can end in a tie.
After 100,000 completed seasons, a team that made the playoffs in 78,412 of them is reported at 78.4%. The same run produces division, wild card, conference, and championship probabilities as a dated historical snapshot.
Because the schedule shrinks every day, probabilities naturally harden toward 0% or 100% as the season progresses. Large single-day swings almost always reflect a result that mattered — a head-to-head game between rivals for the same spot — rather than a change in the model.
Standings, schedules, results, and team statistics come from established sports data feeds and official league sources, refreshed before every model run. In The Playoffs independently calculates every probability published on this site.
Odds may be cited with attribution to In The Playoffs (intheplayoffs.com) and reused under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY 4.0). Please include the date a figure was measured — the numbers change every morning.
Each league's latest odds are also published as JSON and CSV files: /data/nhl-playoff-odds.json and /data/nhl-playoff-odds.csv; /data/nba-playoff-odds.json and /data/nba-playoff-odds.csv; /data/mlb-playoff-odds.json and /data/mlb-playoff-odds.csv; /data/nfl-playoff-odds.json and /data/nfl-playoff-odds.csv.
By simulating every remaining regular-season game 100,000 times using team strength ratings and home advantage, applying each league's real playoff and tiebreaker rules, and reporting the share of simulations in which a team qualifies.
Every morning at 9 AM ET, incorporating all games played the previous day. Each update is a full re-run of 100,000 simulations, not an adjustment of the previous day's numbers.
Late in a season each game carries more weight because fewer games remain to offset it. A head-to-head result between two teams competing for the same spot moves both teams twice — once for the winner, once for the loser.
No. These are model-generated probabilities from simulated seasons. They are not derived from sportsbook lines and are published for informational purposes.
Simulations run nightly at 9 AM ET with current standings and schedule data.