NHL would prefer to finish regular season, shorten Stanley Cup playoffs
By Mike Zawisza
As the NHL continues to iron out potential solutions for if and when the season resumes, it appears as though fitting in some regular season games remains a priority.
During the latest edition of TSN’s Insider Trading, insider Pierre LeBrun stated that according to league sources who were on the recent Board of Governors call, the NHL is prioritizing playing regular season games before initiating the playoffs. LeBrun added that while it’s unlikely the league would play the full 82-game slate, somewhere between 74-78 remains the preference — even going so far as to shorten the playoffs to do so.
Darren Dreger also mentioned during the segment that in order to accommodate these games, 20 of 24 general managers on the Board of Governors call were open to playing best-of-five through the first three rounds of the playoffs and a seven-game Stanley Cup.
Although a few big name players like Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin have previously stated they’d be fine with skipping straight to the postseason, it makes sense for the league to at least give the players a warm up before the real action begins.
The level of competition and physicality is at a season high during the playoffs, so expecting the players to just jump right back in after a few months off (with little to no organized training) would both water down the product and put players’ safety in jeopardy. Considering the whole pause has been aimed at keeping players healthy, immediately putting them at risk for injury seems counter intuitive.
It only seems fair to give teams like the New York Rangers and Minnesota Wild who are on the bubble a chance to make it. If the league were to end the season where it stands today, some teams would still have as many as 14 games left to play. Sure, the league could go off of point percentage in the standings, but something just doesn’t feel right about leaving games on the table — especially at this point in the season.
While a condensed playoff might sound questionable at first, five games can still provide more than enough action. Regardless, it’s encouraging the league still holds hope for the 2019-20 season. This latest proposal seems like the best-case-scenario and one of the more reasonable solutions yet — see P.K. Subban’s crazy 31-team playoff format.
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