The loser point makes things a bit more complicated. You definitely need more than 1 pt per game to even be considered an average team. Basically an average team would win half the games that are tied during regulation time. Then it's a matter of how many games are a tie to begin with.
To follow up, let's take a very average team that wins 27 games, loses 27 games and goes to OT in 27 games (that's 81 games, but whatever), and then manages to win half of the OT games. So that's:
27 x 2 = 54 pts for wins in regular play
27 x 0 = 0 pts for losses in regular play
13.5 x 1 = 13.5 pts for OT losses
13.5 x 2 = 27 pts for OT wins
total is 94.5 pts, which is very close to your estimate of 96 to reach the playoffs usually, which makes sense since half the teams make the playoffs in the NHL, and so a very average team would be right on that line.
So yeah, I agree with you! Anything below such a pace might get DJ canned, whether he's at fault or not.