Hockey's Playoff Problem

I've made my disdain for the current Stanley Cup Playoff format well known.  I'm not the only one.  In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone (other than Commissioner Gary Bettman) who likes the format.  A format that is incredibly flawed, with those flaws becoming even more glaringly obvious each year.  There's also such an easy fix...if only Bettman weren't so stubbornly insistent on keeping things the way they are, despite the criticism and the despite the fact that he's seemingly the only one who likes it this way.

Believe it or not, the current format is more than a decade old.  It came about as a result of the 2013-14 realignment when Atlanta moved to Winnipeg and they went from six divisions to four.  And even that was a compromise.  Bettman wanted to do a straight top four from each division, but the players balked at that, so they settled on the top three from each division with two wild cards in each conference.  That's what we've had ever since with the exception of the two seasons that were disrupted by COVID.

When devising this playoff format, Bettman wanted to hearken back to the 1980s, when the Stanley Cup Playoffs were entirely division-based.  You played only your division opponents in the first two rounds of the playoffs, which obviously led to pretty intense animosity and some pretty heated rivalries.  However, it also led to frequently repeated matchups and the same teams making deep playoff runs.  Either Edmonton or Calgary was in the Stanley Cup Final every year from 1983-90...and facing either the Islanders, Montreal, Boston or Philadelphia.

The 80s also gave us some pretty bad playoff teams, too.  There were only 21 teams in the NHL at the time, and 16 of them made the playoffs.  All you had to do was not finish last and you made the playoffs.  And it led to some pretty lopsided series between division winners (who were actual Stanley Cup contenders) and fourth-place teams that weren't even good.  Essentially, you had to be really bad to miss the playoffs back then!

At the time, doing a division-based playoff format made complete sense.  Most of the league made the playoffs anyway, and it made qualification very straightforward.  However, the NHL eventually outgrew it.  As the league expanded and realigned, they realized basing the playoffs entirely on division standings didn't make much sense.  So, they went to a conference-based format for the 1993-94 season.  And the conference-based format worked great.  More importantly, it created some different playoff matchups instead of the same teams continually playing each other every year.

In the modern-day NHL, noncompetitive playoff teams aren't an issue.  With 32 teams, it's the opposite problem.  Only half the league qualifies for the playoffs.  There are some really good teams that end up missing out, and we've seen wild card teams who are the last to get in go all the way to the Cup Final and even win the Cup.  It's a vastly different league than it was in the 80s.  It's a better league.  It's a league where the players (and teams) deserve a fair playoff format.  Which is not what the current one is.

How many times in the past decade have the top two teams in a conference, if not the entire league, been in the same division?  It happened seemingly every year with Washington and Pittsburgh for a while (and, make no mistake, part of the reason this entire stupid format exists in the first place is because Bettman wanted those frequent Ovechkin vs. Crosby matchups).  Yet, under this format, it's impossible for them to meet in the Conference Final.  You're guaranteed to have one of the top two teams in the conference eliminated by the other in the second round.  If you're in a good division, it's almost better to finish fourth and be a wild card, where you can cross over to the other division, than second.

And let's not forget the inherent unfairness of basing the seeding (and matchups) entirely on division finish rather than point total.  This season is the perfect example.  Minnesota had the seventh-highest point total in the entire NHL.  Yet, the Wild opened the playoffs on the road since they "only" finished third in the Central.  Ditto with Montreal.  The Canadiens finished tied for second in the Atlantic with Tampa Bay, but the Lightning held the tiebreaker, so they got home ice for their first-round series.  Meanwhile, the Penguins, who had eight fewer points than both Tampa Bay and Montreal and just the seventh-most in the East have home ice against Philadelphia for no other reason than because they finished second in the Metropolitan, the weakest division in the league.

Perhaps after all those years of getting screwed by the playoff system with those frequent matchups against Washington, it's somewhat appropriate for Pittsburgh to be the beneficiary of it this season. But the fact that something like this happens seemingly every year should be enough of a clue that the system isn't working.  Teams shouldn't be rewarded with an easier path (or penalized with a harder path) simply because of the division they play in.  Yet that's exactly what keeps happening.

That's to say nothing of the repeat matchups.  I already mentioned Pittsburgh and Washington.  It had also become a bit of a running joke about Edmonton and LA.  The Oilers and Kings played each other in the first round four years in a row, with Edmonton winning every time.  This season, they mixed it up a little, with the Oilers playing the other Southern California team instead while the Kings face Colorado.

There's another key element about the NHL in 2026 that's very different than the NHL in the 1980s.  In the 80s, when there were fewer teams in the league, you were playing everybody else much more frequently.  You played seven or eight games against your division opponents and three against the other teams.  So, the head-to-head had a much bigger bearing on the division standings.  Now you still play three against the other teams in your conference, but only four against your division rivals.  That's 28 total division games and 24 against the rest of the conference.  It's almost equal!  So, why is your division finish weighted so heavily then?

Adding to the frustration is how the NHL could so easily remedy this problem that it insists isn't a problem.  Just go back to the old way!  There's absolutely nothing wrong with the playoff format that they used for 20 years from 1993-94 to 2012-13.  Division winners seeded 1 & 2 with the next six teams seeded 3-8 based on points, regardless of which division they're in or what place they finished.  You'd also go back to reseeding after each round so that the 1-seed plays the lowest remaining seed instead of the fixed bracket.  (And, if the 3-seed has more points than the 2-seed, they get home ice in the second round.)

Going back to this format would still place value on winning the division, but not overvalue it like the current system does.  Just as importantly, it guarantees that the team with the second-most points can be seeded no lower than third.  Which means that there's no possible way they can play the top team until the Conference Final.  It would also guarantee the team with the third-most points home ice in the first round...regardless of division.  They'd no longer be penalized for finishing third in a strong division.

Frankly, none of this seems that hard.  And it makes far more sense than what the NHL is currently doing.  Next season, the regular season increases to 84 games.  Wouldn't that also be the perfect time to revise the playoff format to what it should be?  Which everyone except for Gary Bettman agrees is long overdue.