Stanley Cup Playoffs schedule and NHL offseason dates revealed

Here is the official schedule for the Stanley Cup Playoffs and key dates for the NHL offseason.

After nearly four months without hockey, the NHL has officially announced a return and has finally released a schedule for the season restart and the eventual offseason. Better mark your calendars now, because once hockey comes back, it’s going to be on all the time.

The NHL will return with its 24-team playoff format on Aug 1 with the best of five qualifying round matchups and round-robin tournament for the top four teams in each conference. Though it’s only scheduled to go on for nine days at maximum, there could be up to 52 games crammed into that time period, with up to six games per day from noon to midnight.

The qualifying round will conclude on Aug 9 at the latest, with the winners advancing to the Stanley Cup Playoffs and the losers entered into Phase 2 of the Draft Lottery, which will take place on Aug 10 to determine the first overall pick after a placeholder team won Phase 1 of the Draft Lottery.

The first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs will begin on Aug 11 for the remaining teams in 1-8 playoff format. These series will all return to a best of seven. The second round will start two weeks later around Aug 25, with the remaining teams being re-seeded so the highest remaining teams play the lowest remaining seeds.

The Conference Finals will take place entirely in Edmonton beginning around Sept 8 with the four remaining teams, and the Stanley Cup Final will begin by Sept 22 with the Stanley Cup being handed out no later than Oct. 4 to conclude this unprecedented season.

But the chaos doesn’t end there for the NHL or its fans. Far from it. There’s still an entire offseason of events to fit into such a small window. The NHL draft is scheduled to take place around Oct. 9-10, with free agency opening seven days after the Stanley Cup is awarded. This means that the first round of the draft and free agency could possibly open on the same day.

While there is no official announcement as of right now, training camps are reportedly going to open on Nov. 17 with the 2020-21 NHL regular season opening on Dec. 1. If everything goes to plan, it’s going to be a very busy five months for hockey fans.