Here’s why the Hurricanes, Lightning voted against the NHL’s 24-team playoff

The Lightning and Hurricanes had problems with the NHL’s 24-team playoff idea.

The NHL will return later this year — hopefully — with a new playoff format. On Friday, the NHL and NHLPA approved an expanded 24-team playoff format, up from the league’s usual 16 teams, with a play-in round of games.

The format is a bit complex, but is split between the two conferences with the four top teams in each conference getting a bye past the play-in rounds. The lower seeded teams will then play in a best-of-five play-in round, while the top teams play round robin games against one another to determine seeding for the next round with 16 teams.

The decision passed to overwhelming approval last week, with 29 teams voting yes on the format while two said no. Those two teams, the Carolina Hurricanes and Tampa Bay Lightning, each had their own reasons for voting against the playoff format.

Why did the Lightning and Hurricanes vote against the NHL’s 24-team playoff?

Alex Killorn, the Lightning’s NHLPA spokesperson, revealed to The Athletic over the weekend that while Tampa Bay will go along with the format, the team as a whole has concerns about its fairness.

“They didn’t feel it was fair that certain teams that probably wouldn’t have made the playoffs would have a chance to make the playoffs in a best-of-five series,” Killorn said. “My team also felt it was unfair that the teams with a bye would not be as well prepared for a playoff series as the teams that had already basically played a playoff series to get into the playoffs.

“This was not my opinion alone. As the PA rep I have a duty to represent the voice of my entire team. I don’t want people to think that we don’t want to play. Everyone on our team wants to play. In saying that, we are fine with the vote the PA took and we are ready with it going forward.”

Killorn’s main issue with the 24-team playoff format, as a member of a team that would secure a bye through the first round, is that the round robin games between the top teams likely will not be as competitive as the best-of-five series the other 16 teams will play. That, Killorn said, would give other teams an advantage over those with a bye, allowing those teams to be more prepared for a competitive playoff series.

However, Killorn did state that there’s no way the NHL will be able to please everyone with a format, and that the league needs to get back to playing in the most fair way possible.

“But there’s not going to be any way to do this that satisfies everyone,” Killorn said. “We’re just going to try to be as fair as possible. Whatever it is, we’re going to have to find a way to play with it.”

As for the Hurricanes, Carolina’s representative Jordan Martinook stated in a Zoom call with reporters that they voted against it because it’s detrimental to their playoff odds. Coming into the last month of the season, the Hurricanes had nearly an 80 percent chance to make the postseason, according to Money Puck.

With the new format, the Hurricanes would have to play in a play-in series, decreasing their odds dramatically.

“I feel like if you’re doing the 24-team thing, it basically gives a team a chance that had no chance of making it, which if you play 82 there’s maybe 6, 8 percent chance that the team in 12th place (in the conference) makes it,” Martinook said, via TSN. “Nobody’s ever seen this before, but at the end of the day, the Stanley Cup Playoffs are 16 teams, seven games a series.”

Both Martinook and Killorn make valid points, both for their team’s situations and the league as a whole. There is no solution that will make teams and fans completely happy, but this is the format the NHL has decided to go with, and we will just have to accept that.

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