NHL playoff format gripes back for another round

Top seeds can be eliminated in early rounds

Two of the top four teams in the NHL are guaranteed to be out the playoffs after the second round.

Goodbye Nashville or Winnipeg. Goodbye Boston or Tampa Bay. Thanks for playing.

That’s the reality under the divisional playoff format that could pit the top two teams in each conference against each other in Round 2 after Pittsburgh and Washington were forced into that predicament in back- to- back playoffs.

“There’s not a whole lot of logic there,” Capitals defenceman Brooks Orpik said.

How’s this for logic? If ranking teams one through eight in each conference like the old format that was in place from 1993-94 through 2013, the No. 2 seed is facing the No. 4 seed, No. 3 is playing No. 7, and No. 5 is taking on No. 6 in the first round in the East and the West this year.

A Penguins- Capitals- style repeat could happen this year with the Central’s Predators and Jets on a crash course for a second- round showdown and the Boston Bruins and Tampa Bay Lightning are locked into an Atlantic bracket with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

“You’d think that’d almost be a third-round series kind of thing, but so be it,” Predators defenceman Ryan Ellis said.

“It is what it is. You’re going to have to see a team like that eventually. There’s not much you can do to change it.”

Maybe this spring will be enough to spark a change in the oft- criticized format, now in its fifth season, that was agreed to by the league and NHL Players’ Association through the 2019- 20 season. The Capitals getting knocked out in the second round by the eventual Stanley Cup- champion Penguins didn’t lead to much debate.

“I would assume after this year there’d be a bigger appetite to do it,” Washington GM Brian MacLellan said. “In the past, it hasn’t affected as many teams as might be required to get that movement. It’s basically been us that’s been the team that’s not benefited from the one through eight. But we’ll see what happens this year with a couple more really good teams being beat out in the second round.”

Deputy commissioner Bill Daly said the playoff format is not a burning issue for owners, wasn’t discussed b y GMs an d should be looked at over a long period of time instead of focusing on “anomalies.”

“It’s worked I think for the most part as we anticipated it would work,” Daly said. “I do believe in terms of the matchups in the first two rounds of the playoffs, they’re better with this format. They’re just more intense and more f amiliar with this format than they were in the old format.”

Reigniting and creating new rivalries was the goal of this playoff format, which mimics the one in place for most of the ’ 80s and early ’ 90s. Inequities have happened, but so has plenty of drama on Cup runs by the Los Angeles Kings, Chicago Blackhawks and the Penguins twice.

“I think that as a fan, you want to see matchups against rivals,” said New Jersey defenceman Ben Lovejoy, who won the Cup with Pittsburgh in 2016. “I think that pits arch-enemies against each other more often and it can backfire every once in a while.

“You can get two high seeds playing each other in the first round or the second round and perhaps that’s not fair, but I think ultimately it’s good for the game to have heated playoff series against teams that don’t like each other and see each other a lot.”