Format favors upsets

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

Goodbye Nashville or Winnipeg. Goodbye Tampa Bay or the Bruins. Thanks for playing.

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

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

How’s this for logic? If ranking teams 1 through 8 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, 3 versus 7, and 5 versus 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 Bruins and Tampa Bay locked into a stacked Atlantic bracket with the Maple Leafs.

“You’d think that’d almost be a third-round series kind of thing, but so be it,” Predators defenseman 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 in its fifth season that is agreed to between the league and NHL Players’ Association through the 2019-20 season. The Capitals getting knocked out in the second round by the eventual Stanley Cupchampion Penguins didn’t lead to much debate.