With the NHL postseason fast approaching, it’s not surprising that the discussion about playoff format — and the possibility of revising the current system, which few seem to like — is on the minds of many readers.
Here are two questions from a recent callout for our mailbag, which I wanted to tackle in greater detail.
Alex B. asked: “Could you ever see the league moving to a 1 vs. 16 playoff format with more expansion? This would allow for more interesting matchups as well as a potential final between huge rivals, like Montreal vs. Boston, or Edmonton vs. Los Angeles.”
Rick W. asked: “Is there any appetite in the league (from the owners or managers) to go back to a 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, etc., playoff concept, instead of going with the divisional rivals scenarios that we are seeing now? Something that rewards having a good regular season a little more?”
The short answers are almost certainly “no” to the first question, and a qualified “maybe” to No. 2.
But let’s discuss because if you go back to the beginning, the NHL has had more than 25 different playoff formats in over a century of operations. So, change is always in the wind.
The inaugural 1917-18 season began with four teams, but finished with only three because the Montreal Wanderers’ arena burned down after six games and they were forced to withdraw from the league.
The schedule was split into a first-half winner (Montreal) and a second-half winner (Toronto), who met in a two-game playoff for the right to play the winner of the Pacific Coast Hockey League (Vancouver) for the Stanley Cup.
Of all the formats they’ve had since then, my favorite is the one Alex B. suggested – in which the team with the best overall record gets rewarded by playing the team with the worst record that just managed to sneak into the playoffs.
It’s a system that was only in place for two years, coinciding with my first full-time years in the newspaper business.
The first year was 1979-80, after the NHL absorbed four teams from the World Hockey Association, increasing its membership to 21 teams, with the top 16 teams qualifying for the playoffs. It was an 80-game season and a fully balanced schedule. Matchups were determined by regular-season records, which meant No. 1 played No. 16, No. 2 played No. 15, and so on.
Once the first round ended, teams were reseeded – the team with the best-remaining record played the team with the worst record and so on, through rounds 3 and 4.
That year, two East Coast teams, the New York Islanders and the Philadelphia Flyers, played in a memorable Stanley Cup Final. The Flyers had had a 35-game undefeated streak that year — still a record — and the Islanders had been knocking on the door for a while. Under the current system, you could never have the Flyers and Islanders meet again in a final, as both play in the Metropolitan Division.
The next year, 1980-81, when the Atlanta Flames transferred to Calgary but continued to play in the Patrick Division, the Islanders won the Stanley Cup by defeating the Minnesota North Stars in the final. Calgary, in its inaugural season, met the Flyers in the quarterfinals, an epic seven-game series that involved a rigorous cross-country travel schedule.
The next year, the league realigned the divisions and amended the playoff system into divisional play. Starting in 1981-82, division winners played the division’s fourth-place team, the second-place team met the third-place team, and whoever emerged from the divisional playoffs played the other conference opponent for a right to go to the Stanley Cup Final.
On the plus side, that system created a lot of memorable Battle of Alberta and Battle of Quebec meetings in the mid-1980s, and it probably penalized some very good Winnipeg Jets teams that needed to get past both Edmonton and Calgary just to qualify for the third round — and never did.
The most egregiously unfair year was probably 1984-85. Edmonton had 49 wins that year (out of 80 games);…
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