Winners and losers of the NHL 24-team playoff format

The NHL 24-team playoff format favors some teams more than others.

The NHL made waves earlier this week with its official announcement of a 24-team playoff for if hockey can return later this year. It’s an ambitious plan, one that still has a lot of work left to be done, but the idea has brought life back into the sports world even if for a little while.

Hockey still has a long way to go before it can return, but the NHL’s 24-team playoff format has given fans a lot to talk about in the months to come. The qualifying rounds offer a unique look to hockey, which has stuck with a 16-team playoff for a long time, and the addition of a new round in the postseason means more chaos is likely inbound for the most exciting playoff sport.

As such, certain teams in the NHL make out better with the 24-team playoff format than others. Here are the top winners and losers from the NHL’s 24-team playoff format.

NHL 24-team playoff format winners

Dallas Stars, Philadelphia Flyers

Possibly the biggest winners of the NHL’s 24-team playoff format are the Stars and the Flyers. Both teams sit as the No. 4 seed going into the round robin tournament which will determine the seeding for the first round of the playoffs.

Thanks to the inclusion of a round robin tournament to determine the seeding for each conference’s top four teams, both the Stars and the Flyers can jump into the top spot if they win their games and also can’t go lower than their current position. In essence, the Stars and Flyers have nothing to lose and everything to gain by their positions as the No. 4 seed coming into this format.

Of course, it also depends on how the NHL will format the first round, whether it be a bracketed format or by reseeding. If it stays bracketed, the No. 1 seed would have a harder matchup, while if the playoffs are reseeded, the No. 1 seed would face the team with the lowest points percentage out of those remaining.

There are a lot of variables in this scenario, but for the Stars and the Flyers, there’s no better place to be right now than in that No. 4 spot.

Chicago Blackhawks, New York Rangers, Montreal Canadiens

Any team that would not have gotten into the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs in a normal year but now will under these unique circumstances is automatically a winner here. Even though the Blackhawks and Canadiens were sellers at this year’s trade deadline, both teams now have the chance to advance to the first round thanks to the best-of-five qualifying round.

Of these teams, the Rangers were the only ones likely to make a significant push to a postseason run, thanks to their goaltending and the efforts of Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad. All three teams will have the same odds of advancing to the next round, however, meaning they could very well get into a playoff position they previously had no hope of obtaining this year.

While the NHL’s reasoning for expanding the playoffs to 24 teams was to include bubble teams, the Rangers, the Blackhawks and Canadiens benefit the most here from this format.

Pittsburgh Penguins, Columbus Blue Jackets

Though both the Penguins and the Blue Jackets have to win their respective play-in series in order to advance, they’ll be doing so with nearly full strength. The Penguins lost forward Jake Guentzel to shoulder injury in late December, which had a four to six month recovery time after surgery. If the NHL can resume play later this summer, the Penguins are nearly assured to get Guentzel back into the lineup, which would be a huge boon.

Before his injury, Guentzel was an All-Star selection with 43 points in 39 games, including 20 goals. His inclusion back onto the Penguins’ top line would provide a major boost to a team that would have to play five rounds of hockey to win the Stanley Cup.

As for the Blue Jackets, the team was one of the most injured ones headed into the league’s pause. If hockey returns in late July, key pieces in Seth Jones, Oliver Bjorkstrand and Cam Atkinson, among others, are slated to return to the Blue Jackets lineup, giving the team a fighting chance against a stacked Toronto Maple Leafs squad.

NHL 24-team playoff format losers

Carolina Hurricanes

There’s a reason the Hurricanes were one of only two teams to vote against the NHL’s 24-team playoff format. Before the pause, Carolina was in fourth place in the NHL’s most competitive division, just five points behind the Penguins with a game in hand. Now, however, after all that hard work the Hurricanes will have to play in the qualifying round to advance, and they’ll have to do it against the Rangers.

This season, the Hurricanes went 0-4 in their games against New York, with the Rangers outscoring them 17-9. Of course, past performance does not always indicate future results, as these playoffs will essentially be like the start of a new season altogether, but it’s not the best position to be in for sure.

The Hurricanes will likely see the return of injured players such as Dougie Hamilton and Sami Vatanen to the lineup for these qualifying games, which will no doubt be beneficial to the team. However, the Hurricanes have an unenviable position at the moment, which is a shame after their solid placement this season.

Boston Bruins

Given how the Bruins ran away with the Presidents’ Trophy — and most of the NHL awards — this season, you’d think the NHL would be willing to give the team a bigger reward for being the league’s No. 1 team. Sadly for Boston fans, the NHL has evened the playing field across the board, meaning the Bruins will lose out on advantages they would have had in a normal hockey year.

For starters, home ice advantage in terms of crowds will not exist, so Boston maintaining your typical home ice throughout the playoffs will not happen. Not only that, but the Bruins may even lose their top seed status to a team, since they will have to play in that round robin tournament to determine seeding for the first round.

It’s surprising that the NHL has done away with those measures that make winning the Presidents’ Trophy so desirable to teams, especially with including that round robin tournament for seeding purposes that’s so detrimental to the top seeds, but this is not a normal hockey year by any means.

Canada

While Canada has three cities — Edmonton, Toronto and Vancouver — listed as potential hub cities for the NHL’s return to play, there are a few wrinkles that will need to be ironed out before the league could set up shop. Mainly the fact that the country currently requires 14-day self-quarantine days upon entering its border, which has been seen by the NHL as a non-starter.

NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly spoke on the matter on Tuesday, hopeful that the league will find a solution that works to get Canada into the mix.

“If we’re not able to really get an interpretation of the quarantine consistent with our players’ ability to travel in and not have to do a strict self-quarantine in a hotel room… we won’t be in a position to use any of the Canadian cities as a hub,” Daly said. “So we’re faced with having to find a solution to that. And hopefully we can.”

Canada makes sense as a potential spot for a hub city, and it would be great for the NHL to include it in its return to play plans, but it’s unknown at this point in time if the league will be able to make it happen.

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