Pass or Fail: NHL Stanley Cup Playoff format (Roundtable)

The 2016 Stanley Cup Playoffs are chugging along to the conference finals, and once again the current playoff format is under scrutiny. 

Should top seeds be better protected? Is the “wild card” format working? Does the NHL need to rethink this thing, or are you happy with the flip from the conference-based format to the rivalry-accentuating divisional one?

In this Puck Daddy roundtable, we kicked around the current playoff format, debating what we like and don’t like about it. Feel free to add your opinions in the comments, and tell us if you think it gets a PASS or a FAIL.

And here … we … go.

Sean Leahy, Puck Daddy Editor

The NHL looooooooves rivalries. The league loves them so much that they changed the entire playoff structure to go back to divisional matchups, which could be fun, but mostly doesn't live up to the hype. It's like interleague play in Major League Baseball. There are some years where Mets-Yankees, Cubs-White Sox can be fun, same for the potential of Rangers-Islanders, Blues-Blackhawks, Kings-Sharks/Ducks, but it doesn't work out that way usually.

Then there's the question of what exactly the reward is for the Washington Capitals winning the Presidents' Trophy. Sure, they get home ice, but that isn't always the advantage it's pumped up to be. Instead, the Capitals get to face the second-seeded Penguins in Round 2 while the third- and fifth-ranked teams in the East met for a chance to move on to the conference final.

Sure, you could say if you're the best team you should beat whatever opponent is put in front of you, but you should be rewarded for winning your conference in the regular season with the "easiest" pathway to the Stanley Cup Final, not just the ability to sleeping in your own bed the night before a Game 7.

Ryan Lambert, Puck Daddy Columnist

It's bad.

It's not that there should be re-seeding — which, if they're going to insist on a divisional format, there should be — but rather that a divisional format necessarily ensures you're not getting the most advantageous matchups for top seeds.

That, in turn, necessarily ensures more low seeds advance.

The first round in the East had the No. 6 and 8 teams in the conference (Tampa and Detroit) play each other. Out West, St. Louis/Chicago was No. 3 vs. No. 4. That's not a re-seeding issue, it's a "how seeds are assigned in the first place is idiotic" issue. All of that helps conference finals become less competitive than they should be, because you're bouncing more good teams out of the first round and giving bad ones a better chance to advance.

Maybe you say that this gives us better matchups in the first and second rounds instead, and to some extent that's true. But for me it doesn't make sense if you want the playoffs to be a meritocracy. It does help Build Rivalries or whatever, which is all the league cares about, but that isn't the stated purpose of playoffs in the first place.

Josh Cooper, Puck Daddy Editor

I think the NBA should be the NHL’s model as far as playoffs. That league has a bracket and never deviates from it with reseeding. You know who you’re going to face and it’s easy for fans to follow and it’s ben this way for many years with a few small tweaks along the way.  

The NHL changed their postseason format when realignment occurred in order to boost rivalries within a division, and take the imbalance between conferences into account. The league is big on nostalgia and this plays into that mindset of ‘playing out of your division to win a championship.’

This has worked to some degree with teams with divisional rivalries having a great probability of playing one another – though sadly we still haven’t seen the Islanders and Rangers face off in the postseason since the change. But for the newer fan it can appear confusing and you really have to understand the NHL, the league’s divisions and the playoff breakdown in order to fully get the playoffs, and why certain teams play each other.

I have no problems with the Capitals and Penguins (the East’s No. 1 and No. 2 teams) playing each other in the second-round. If you’re Washington you’re going to have to beat Pittsburgh anyway if you want to win the Stanley Cup. If I had a complaint it would be to simplify the formula to appeal to the masses. The Stanley Cup Playoffs are the best part of the NHL product. Make it easier for all fans to follow along.  

Greg Wyshynski, Puck Daddy Editor

The current playoff format is like eating your entire bag of Halloween candy an hour after you Trick or Treat: You know it’s not the right thing to do, everything ends up tasting the same every year but DEAR GOD THE SUGAR RUSH I CAN LIFT A CAR RIGHT NOW WITH MY BARE HANDS.

But as much as the contact high of divisional and geographic rivalries are great, there’s so much wrong with this format.

1. It doesn’t protect the top seeds properly. Yes, they should reseed after the first round. The fact that a team that wins the President’s Trophy doesn’t have a red carpet to the conference final further diminishes a regular season that already seems too long and inconsequential.

2. For all the rivalry matchups it forces, the wild card format still produces matchups like the Panthers and Islanders and the Predators and Ducks in the first round, which do nothing insofar as establishing divisional rivalries. (That said, the wild card format does add several new paths to the playoffs to keep teams in contention deeper into the season, while turning the last weekend of play into a mad scramble for seeding.)

3. The old conference-based playoff format was never a problem. The only reason it was jettisoned was because of realignment to 16 teams in the East and 14 in the West. Gary Bettman wanted to go four divisions and have four teams from each division battle through to the conference final – the old-school format. The NHLPA thought that with inequitable alignment, there needed to be a wild card system. Maybe we get back to the conference format if the NHL expands. Who knows?

4. It’s needlessly complicated. Seriously, it’s bad enough that the current standings model looks like a drunk working on an Excel spreadsheet; now you’re telling casual fans that they need a “Homeland”-esque wall of photographs connected with string just to figure out how the Predators are playing in the Pacific Division final.

All that said, there’s still a part of me that hates the incessant whining about “good teams going out early” in the NHL postseason. Guess what: It’s going to happen, because there are too many good teams.

If we had a conference-seeding format for the 2016 Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Penguins and Lightning would have played in the first round. The Blues and Sharks would have played. The Blackhawks and Kings would have as well – can you imagine the river of pundit tears that would have flowed from the Canadian border if the NHL’s two dynastic teams had to eliminate one another in the first round?

Oh, and we would have ended up with the Ducks and Predators anyway…

No playoff format its going to be perfect. The divisional one back in the Patrick and Norris days was unfair to teams stuck in Divisions Of Death for a decade. The conference format didn’t accentuate current rivalries or build new ones through repetition. The current format does both, but ends up having the two best regular-season teams in the East and the West meeting in the semifinals, and in both cases to face a team that fell short of 100 points in the conference final.

The only thing that remains perfect: 16 teams. But how long before that format changes, too?

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the NHL Play-In Game, Presented by Bridgestone…”

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Again, what say you?

PASS OR FAIL: The current NHL playoff format.

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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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