How to fix the NHL’s proposed 24-team playoff format

The NHL’s 24-team playoff format seems to be gaining a lot of steam as talks to resume the season continue, but it needs some tweaks if it’s going to happen.

It seems as if we could be getting some more news regarding the NHL’s proposed 24-team playoff format soon. On Wednesday night, Sportsnet reported that the NHL and NHL Players’ Association are actively working on a 24-team conference based playoff format.

The NHL and NHLPA are expected to meet Thursday and Friday to continue discussing this format and it’ll also have to go through all the players to be approved as well. In this proposal, the top four teams in the Eastern Conference and Western Conference would get a bye to the 16-team playoff and the rest of the teams would have to do a play-in series.

Those series would be a best-of-five before going to a best-of-seven. For example, in this proposal we would see the five-seed Pittsburgh Penguins go up against the 12-seed Montreal Canadiens and then in the West, it would be the five-seed Edmonton Oilers against the 12-seed Chicago Blackhawks. The rest of the matchups in this proposal can be found here:

Before going into how this can be fixed, we do have to say that no format will please anyone. People will complain no matter what format the NHL uses. With that said, this proposal isn’t the best way to go about things because it’s unfair to some of the top teams that shouldn’t need a play-in series just to get to the regular 16. The Penguins were third place in probably the toughest division in hockey before the season was put on hiatus and their reward is a play-in series against a team that’s 10 points out of a normal playoff spot.

The same goes for the Oilers, who were very close to being top two in the Pacific and their reward is a play-in series against the Blackhawks who were six points out, but overall a below .500 team. Money, of course, talks a lot in this proposal and putting in these big market teams makes sense for that only aspect.

It also screws over these couple of teams, as Montreal’s odds to get to the regular 16 shoot up to 40 percent, according to Dom Luszczyszyn from The Athletic. Another odd part about this format is that if those teams upset the five seeds, they get a better matchup than the eight or nine seed. Montreal would get to play the Philadelphia Flyers, but a team such as the Toronto Maple Leafs or the Columbus Blue Jackets (who are in the 8 versus 9 matchup) would get the Boston Bruins.

There are just too many loopholes in this proposed format to work, so let’s look at a suggestion for a small change that could actually have this look better.

Have the top three NHL teams in each division get a bye

This is the best way to go about it. For one, it prioritizes getting top three in a team’s respective division and it rewards them for doing so. No five seed in a conference should have to win a play-in series just to get into the regular one when they had all but earned their way in before the season was paused. With those out of the way, the battle then becomes between the wild card teams.

The NHL can have WC 3 and WC 6 do a series, as well as WC 4 and WC 5 from each conference to see who goes to play WC 1 and WC 2 respectively. Then it comes down to who’s going to advance from this round in the best-of-five and the two winners go on to the regular 16 team format. This way, a team such as Montreal or Chicago will actually have to earn their way through to it, and not just have a singular five-game series with a five seed where anything can happen. After that, the league can seed each conference one through eight, and then the playoff matchups will be set.

Sure, it’s not a perfect format (the 20-22 team format is still better) but this fix at least makes the 24-team idea not as bad as before. It’s just up to the NHL if they want to fine-tune it a little bit.

Follow FanSided NHL for more news, analysis, opinion and unique coverage about hockey in all forms throughout the entire 2019-20 NHL season and beyond.