Less than a month until the end of the regular season.

Less than a month until the start of the playoffs, and the yin to the yang of that benchmark in the hockey cycle of life means it’s less than a month until the start of the annual coaching carousel.

Roughly one third of NHL teams – 11 to be exact – have head coaches on expiring contracts in one form or another. Given the implosion of some teams and the stalled evolution of others this season, it’s fair to suggest the summer could see a groundswell of coaching migration around the NHL.

Here’s a quick look, in alphabetical order by team, at those bench bosses whose contracts are nearing their ends and what the future landscape looks like – plus one whose contract isn’t expiring but is on thin ice.

Dallas Eakins, Anaheim Ducks

Anaheim has a club option to bring Eakins back. He is finishing up his third season with the Ducks. All three will end with the team outside the playoff bubble and this season has been more disappointing than the first two in many respects given the team’s strong start. There’s also a new GM in town with Pat Verbeek cleaning house at the trade deadline, dealing Hampus Lindholm, Josh Manson and Rickard Rakell after Verbeek was tabbed to replace Bob Murray, who resigned after an investigation into a long pattern of abusive behavior. So Eakins’ roster has been threadbare since the deadline, adding to the team’s last-quarter slide.

Does Eakins get a chance to put Verbeek’s rebuild plan into action? The blossoming of players like Troy Terry and Trevor Zegras suggest Eakins has got the goods to help this team get back on track, plus there is always the old adage that a GM needs to play the ‘fire the coach’ card sparingly to preserve his own job security. That caveat is counterbalanced by the idea that Eakins is not Verbeek’s guy and thus may be considered more expendable as Verbeek continues to put his stamp on the team. Our guess is that Eakins, considered a fine teaching coach, returns, especially with the team in definite rebuild mode.

Derek King, Chicago Blackhawks

The Blackhawks are in the crawling, not walking stages of trying to repair a broken franchise. General manager Kyle Davidson, like Verbeek, took over late in the season as full-time GM, although he had been acting GM since Stan Bowman departed the team in the wake of the Kyle Beach sexual assault scandal. Davidson fired Jeremy Colliton and installed interim head coach Derek King and then sold off parts like Brandon Hagel and Marc-Andre Fleury at the trade deadline. The team has been a disaster, though, especially defensively and in goal. They are tied for 26th in goals allowed per game. They have a minus-61 goal differential and a woeful 11-18-6 record at the formerly fortress-like United Center. Chicago’s uninspired play down the stretch, including multiple games in which the team blew large leads, reinforces the feeling that King is really a placeholder as head coach.

But Davidson will have to make a hard choice. Does make a change this off-season if he believes the Blackhawks could quickly jump back to playoff contention after failing to win a traditional playoff round since winning the Stanley Cup in 2015? Or does he bide his time in making a coaching change as he deals with reconstructing his hockey ops department? Given the lackluster play of late, we won’t be at all surprised if the Blackhawks look to find a young coach that could grow this team back to contention a la former Ranger bench boss David Quinn or highly regarded assistant coach Lane Lambert.