The National Hockey League and the NHL Player’s Association reached an agreement on Thursday regarding the structure of the upcoming 24-team playoff format.
The play-in round (involving teams 5 - 12 in each conference) will be a best-of-five series, while the Conference quarter-final, semi-final, final and Stanley Cup Final will all be best-of-seven series.
Sportsnet’s Chris Johnston indicated that the integrity of the playoffs (which means winning 16 postseason games to win the Cup) was prioritized by the players, but said that a playoff of that length will take over two months to complete.
The top four teams in each conference will play a three-game round-robin to determine seeding for the first round, but that the club’s regular-season points percentage will act as a tiebreaker, and that teams will be reseeded after each round instead of being bracketed.
The @NHL has announced more details of the playoff format for the Return to Play Plan following approval by the League’s Board of Governors and the @NHLPA.
Going away from brackets is something that might benefit teams with a middle seed in the play-in round like the Toronto Maple Leafs. The winner of the Leafs-Columbus series would play the #1 team in the first round, but if one team ranked lower than them (Montreal, New York or Florida) wins their best-of-five series, Toronto would play a lower seed in the first round.
There continues to be a discussion between the two sides about when Phase 3 (training camps) and Phase 4 (the playoffs) will commence, but last week the NHL stated that training camps will not begin until after July 10, which makes it probable that the play-in round will not begin until the end of July or early August.
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Leafs prospect Nick Robertson continued to pile up the accolades for his impressive OHL season, as the 18-year-old was named the winner of the CHL Sportsmen of the Year.
Robertson was previously named Prospect of the Year by ESPN’s Chris Peters, as the Peterborough Petes nominee for the Red Tilson Trophy (the OHL’s most outstanding player), and as an OHL First Team All-Star after leading the CHL with 55 goals in 46 games.
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