NHL playoffs present a grueling challenge

Sorry, Drew Doughty.

It’s difficult to find anyone — from Hockey Hall of Fame goalie Ken Dryden to French-born Avalanche forward Pierre Edouard Bellemare— supporting Doughty’s assertion that these expanded NHL playoffs won’t produce, as the Los Angeles Kings defenseman put it in April, “a real” Stanley Cup winner.

“I could not agree less,” Bellemare said. “The level of play might take a day or two to get to the competitiveness, but this Stanley Cup playoff is going to be the toughest ever.”

Not only are teams, such as the previously injury-depleted Avalanche, far healthier than they were when the season was paused in March, everyone is faced with the same challenge of restarting from a standstill.

“You don’t have any team that played 82 games and feels unbelievable because they had a great season. That was 12 weeks ago, 14 weeks ago. I mean, this is gone,”

Bellemare said. “So, every team’s going to have to from Day 1 create its own momentum.”

Three months ago, Doughty questioned what the format would resemble and how the regular season ended with 189 games remaining.

“I’m just not a huge fan of it, as much as I want to play,” said Doughty, whose Kings didn’t qualify for the expanded 24-team playoff.

In light of the concerns, players earned praise for demanding the four traditional playoff rounds be best-of-seven series to preserve the integrity of postseason.

“It was already the hardest trophy to win. I think it just got a little harder,” New York Islanders forward Cal Clutterbuck said.

More than four months since a puck was dropped in a competitive setting, and following two weeks of training camp, the NHL took its next step toward resuming play: All 24 remaining teams were entering the “bubble” in their respective hub cities of Toronto and Edmonton, Alberta. Each will play one exhibition game before the playoffs open Aug. 1.