After taking a pause for the 4 Nations Face-Off -- and continuing Canadian domination in best-on-best tournaments -- the NHL regular season is now rocketing toward the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The stakes are high. Time is short. Who's in and who's out?

The NHL Bubble Watch is our monthly check-in on the Stanley Cup playoff races using postseason probabilities and points projections from Stathletes for all 32 teams. We also reveal which teams shouldn't worry about any of this because they're lottery-bound already.

As a bonus this month, we're also including which player from the playoff contenders needs to step up the most in the stretch run.

But first, a look at the projected playoff bracket: