Bolt battle in forecast
Leafs and Lightning, NHL’s two best teams, appear poised for early playoff meeting
TAMPA, FLA.— It’s a scary thought for Toronto Maple Leafs fans with Stanley Cup dreams.
It’s just as frightening a prospect for supporters of the Tampa Bay Lightning, too.
If the NHL playoffs began Thursday, the Maple Leafs and Lightning would have found themselves on a collision course to meet in the playoffs. And the thing that makes both fan bases shudder is that the Lightning and Maple Leafs — though they were the two best teams in the NHL heading into their Thursday night matchup at Amalie Arena — would be mapped out to meet in the post-season’s second round.
That’s presupposing, of course, both teams could be counted on to win their theoretical first-round best-of-sevens. As of Thursday, before the Lightning’s 4-1 win, Tampa would open the postseason against the Canadiens, Toronto against Buffalo.
Beyond that, the teams on pace to finish first and second overall would be lining up in round two.
“It doesn’t really make sense,” said Steven Stamkos, the Lightning captain and GTA native. “But that’s the way it is.”
Stamkos is right. The NHL’s current playoff format is nonsensical to its core. Think about it for a moment: If a playoff bracket was purely designed to determine the top team in the game — if it truly rewarded a team’s performance in the regular season with an appropriate advantage in post-season seeding — then the teams that finish Nos. 1 and 2 in the league standings wouldn’t have to worry about meeting each other until, ideally, a Stanley Cup final.
But somewhere along the way, the NHL got away from acknowledging and rewarding regular-season excellence in favour of priorities like manufacturing division rivalries. And now the league is stuck with a system that often greets elite performance over an 82-game slog with the seeding equivalent of a slap in the face.
Last year, after winning the Presidents’ Trophy as the regular season’s best team, the Nashville Predators got the privilege of facing the secondbest team in the league, the Winnipeg Jets, in the second round of the playoffs. The Predators lost in seven.
The same thing happened to the Washington Capitals in back-to-back years before that. They were the best team in the league in 2016 and 2017 and somehow, in both years, their second-round matchup turned out to be the Pittsburgh Penguins, the eventual Stanley Cup champions both years. In one of those years the Penguins, when they met the Capitals, owned the second-best regular-season record in the league. In the other, the Penguins owned merely the second-best record in the East.
What kind of a format deals so many good teams so many bum draws? One that’s horribly ill-conceived and in need of urgent repair. Or, as the slightly more diplomatic assessment of Stamkos, one that’s “a little imperfect in that regard.”
“I know what we’re trying to do, create those rivalries and get those division games to really mean something,” Stamkos said. “But I think you saw it a few years there with Pittsburgh and Washington in the second round. Everyone talks about Wash not being able to get past the second round – well, they played the Stanley Cup champs back to back there, and it’s tough.”
It’s beyond tough. It’s downright unfair and unnatural, like a headliner playing before the opening acts, like a two-hour movie where the climax comes 30 minutes in.
“My personal preference is the old format,” said John Tavares, the Maple Leafs centreman, speaking of a conference-based system wherein the top seed plays the eighth seed, and so on. “Whether you win the Presidents’ Trophy or you earn home ice or you put up 105, 106 points — I think you deserve to be rewarded for that. Theoretically it’s a better matchup, and I think (in the current system) that sometimes goes out the window.”
Said teammate Nazem Kadri: “Just because we’re in such a good division, it affects us a little more than maybe the rest of the league. For me, I would like to see the traditional format. That’s just how playoff hockey has always been seen in my eyes.”
There are those who don’t believe it’s worthy of complaint; that winning the Cup means winning four playoff rounds, the order of the opponents irrelevant.
“In the end, what are you going to do about it?” said Mike Babcock, the Maple Leafs coach. “Wherever you end up, you’re excited to be in the playoffs and excited for the opportunity.”
Said Frederik Andersen, the Toronto goaltender: “It’s definitely not in my job description to start thinking about that stuff. Eventually, whoever we’re going to have to play, we’re going to have to play.”
True. But it’d be a lot more exciting for fans of this year’s Maple Leafs and Lightning teams if the theoretical playoff bracket saw the two best teams in the league meeting, at the very least, in an Eastern Conference final. That’d be the way it would be if the league returned to a conference-based format. There are those who’d prefer an even more holistic revamping of the system, with the team that finishes first overall playing the team that finishes 16th overall in the opening round of the Stanley Cup tournament, the way it was in the 1980s.
And there are those, too, pushing playoff expansion. Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon is among power brokers suggesting a 20- or 24-team playoff bracket. One scenario Dundon sketched out in a recent interview with the Star would see conference seeds seven through 10 partake in a four-team mini-tournament, either with a single play-in game or a best-of-three series. In that conferencebased scenario the top two seeds in the conference would face the respective winners of the play-in bracket, a system that would avoid these earlyround clashes of titans.
Dundon, mind you, acknowledged that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is currently against playoff expansion. And the league has said repeatedly that it doesn’t see an immediate need to rejig its current 16-team format, either. Maybe Seattle’s addition to the fray in 2021 will be the impetus for change. Until then, we’re back to a scary thought. If the Lightning and Maple Leafs are both going to be elite for a while — and if their fellow Atlantic Division rivals in Boston are a sleeping giant suffering through an injury-plagued season — their early-round playoff prospects could be murder for a while.
“I guess as one of the top teams, maybe the advantage isn’t quite there for having such a great regular season,” said Stamkos.
Not quite there, indeed.
“It doesn’t really make sense. But that’s the way it is.” STEVEN STAMKOS LIGHTNING CAPTAIN, ON THE NHL’S PLAYOFF FORMAT