NHL has no appetite to expand playoffs beyond 16 teams

Sixteen teams, each one needing to win 16 games over four rounds of a best-of-seven series to lift the Stanley Cup, has been the way the NHL decides its champion for nearly four decades. That isn't changing any time soon.

The NHL is the only one of the major four North American professional sports leagues not to expand its playoffs in recent years. It is content with the existing format and isn't looking to add more teams, a play-in round or anything else amid plenty of discussion about doing so.

“We're not giving any thought to expanding the playoffs,” commissioner Gary Bettman said in advance of the playoffs, which begin Saturday. “We have no interest in it. What we have is working very well. When you look at how our playoffs play out, the number of six- and seven-game series, the competitiveness of it, nothing in anybody else's playoffs rivals that.”

There is an added benefit, Bettman said. It makes the regular season more meaningful. A handful of players who have won the Cup in recent years agreed that they prefer the status quo.

“You like what you know, I feel like,” said Washington's Trevor van Riemsdyk, who won the Cup with Chicago in 2015.

“It keeps the importance of the regular season and all that stuff in the right place. I think 82 games is plenty of time, ample time, to make it.”

It has been that way since 1987, and in that era 16 of the league's 21 teams qualified for the playoffs. Now the league has 32 teams and half of them make the cut.

“Where we're at right now at the NHL, I think we're in a good spot,” said Pittsburgh's Reilly Smith, who won with the Golden Knights last year.

“There's a lot of parity in the league, but 16 teams is plenty.”

The NBA is in its third season with a four team per conference play-in tournament.

The NFL went from 12 to 14 playoff teams starting in 2020, and two years later Major League Baseball expanded to 12 teams, with six division winners and six wild cards making it.