Bob Frid-USA TODAY Sports
For 10 years now, the NHL’s Stanley Cup playoff format has emphasized divisional rivalries. In this excerpt from the special-edition 2024 Champions issue, The Hockey News’ Jared Clinton looks back at the pros and cons of the league’s post-season format.
When the 2023-24 NHL post-season concluded – when the Stanley Cup was awarded, the parties started and the parade plans were finalized – the NHL put a bow on a decade of its current playoff format.
Pedants, perhaps, will offer a correction. It’s been nine years, really, given the pandemic-altered playoffs of 2019-20 saw the addition of a qualification round, and, wait, what about the one-off full-scale divisional realignment necessary to complete the 2020-21 season? OK, fine. Give it an asterisk, but the point stands that the league has stuck with at least some version of its four-division-plus-wild-card-combatants arrangement for the past decade.
More than simply a tidy milestone, there’s significance to the NHL’s commitment to its post-season structure. Notably, it’s the second-longest stretch the league has gone without fine-tuning or altogether reorganizing the path to the Stanley Cup since 1967 expansion.
For some, that the format has remained unchanged brings comfort. Nothing wrong with leaving well enough alone. But among other sections of the greater hockeysphere, including portions of the fan base, pundits, players and management, familiarity has, as it is wont to do, bred a level of contempt. A system that was once shiny and new has become tiresome, or its faults have become increasingly apparent, leading to everything from murmurs to outright calls the league should amend its playoff procedures. And making a change wouldn’t be without precedent, particularly at this precise moment in the world of major sports.
The 2024 Champions Issue: https://t.co/smKk3NQL6o pic.twitter.com/G9JfuM33EQ
— The Hockey News (@TheHockeyNews) August 2, 2024
Of the so-called big four leagues in North America, the NHL is the only circuit that hasn’t revised its post-season structure since 2020. Further to that, the NHL is the only one of the four leagues that has held out on playoff expansion, with each of the NFL, MLB and NBA expanding their title tournaments the past five years by way of win-and-you’re-in showdowns or additional wild-card spots. And for each of those leagues, it’s been a massive boon to television ratings. The NBA, for instance, reported a record-setting average of 3.2 million viewers over the six play-in games it held ahead of its 2024 playoffs.
In spite of this, the NHL has held fast that it does not see the benefit in following suit.
“We’re not giving any thought to expanding the playoffs,” said NHL commissioner Gary Bettman during a pre-playoff press conference. “We have no interest in it. What we have is working very well. When you look at how our playoffs play out – the number of six- and seven-game series, the competitiveness of it – nothing in anybody else’s playoffs rivals that.”
There won’t be many who argue. But it’s worth noting that if the NHL has no intention of adopting a play-in procedure similar to the NBA, Bettman and Co. have, in fact, flirted with the idea in the past – and the option to at least broach the subject in an official manner exists in the current collective bargaining agreement.
Indeed, in the CBA between the NHL and NHLPA that was ratified in January 2013, the same agreement that was later extended in July 2020 as part of the league’s Return to Play following the COVID-19 outbreak, Article 16.2 states the Players’ Association has consented to a “playoff qualification round” consisting of four teams from each conference playing in best-of-3 series. Though not specified, logic dictates such a play-in round would pit the seventh seed against the 10th seed and eighth against the ninth.
Equally fascinating is the language wasn’t written anew in the CBA that ended the 2012-13 lockout. Instead, the proviso is a holdover from the deal that concluded the 2005-06 stoppage. The document notes the NHL was permitted by the NHLPA to adopt the qualification round in either the 2005-06 or 2006-07 season without the need for any additional green light. That no such play-in came to pass in either of those campaigns following the NHL’s lost year doesn’t render the Article obsolete, though.
“If the league desires to implement a playoff qualification round with respect to future NHL season(s),” the CBA reads, “it may only do so with the consent of the NHLPA, which shall not be unreasonably withheld.”
That last bit, of course, is the wrinkle, and it’s not as though the players haven’t exercised their power to shoot down changes to league structure in the past.
In January 2012, the NHLPA threw a wrench in a “radical realignment plan” that had been approved by the NHL’s board of governors a month earlier. A similar realignment and a pivot to today’s playoff framework were included in the divisional revamp that took effect after the ratification of the current CBA.
If we’re to take the league at its word and assume there’s no interest in an expanded playoff universe, though, is there an arrangement the suits and skaters would all agree on?
Well, remember that bit about the divisional playoffs’ status as the second-longest-tenured structure? The first was the one that existed from 1998-99 to 2013, known more colloquially as the one-versus-eight format. Though the NHL’s version was not a true one-versus-eight, as division winners were seeded first through third based on their point totals, with the five next-best records earning the fourth through eighth seeds. The design is considered in some corners the platonic ideal of post-season play. And it has support.
In the time since the present format was introduced, along with its two rounds of intra-division play, a number of players – including the likes of Steven Stamkos, John Tavares and Nazem Kadri – have expressed displeasure with the playoff configuration. As recently as the 2023 All-Star Game, Sidney Crosby made his feelings clear.
“I like one to eight,” Crosby said. “The regular season, as difficult as it is, teams should be rewarded, and I guess that’s probably the best way that you should be rewarded.”
This is an excerpt from Jared Clinton’s feature story on the NHL’s playoff format, which appeared in The Hockey News’ 2024 Champions Issue.
In this video, Adam Proteau offers his perspective on the NHL’s playoff format:
To read the full article and get complete access to thousands more stories from The Hockey News, visit THN.com/Free and sign up for a subscription. All subscriptions include complete access to more than 76 years of articles at The Hockey News Archive.
News Summary:
- Playoff Division: Is It Time to Change the NHL's Post-Season Format?
- Check all news and articles from the latest NHL updates.