The announcement that the NHL and the NHLPA have agreed on a plan to resume the 2019-20 season is good news to the millions of hockey fans throughout the U.S. and Canada. While the league still hasn't set a hard start date for play to resume, nor decided on which two locations will serve as host cities, this much we do know:
The balance of the regular season will be canceled. Any and all awards, including the Hart and Vezina trophies, will be determined based on the stats at the time play was suspended.
Each team will be limited to a total of 50 personnel, including 28 skaters and 3 goalies. The league is considering banning all fighting and requiring players to wear full face shields to reduce spread of droplets.
Training camps should begin sometime in early July, with the playoffs commencing by the end of the month or early August. The Stanley Cup final will likely be played in late September or early October, depending on conditions and length of series.
The playoff format will consist of 12 teams per conference for a total of 24. The top four teams in each conference will play a round robin to determine seeding and all will receive a bye. The final eight teams in each conference will face off against each other in a best of five as follows: 5 vs. 12, 6 vs. 11, 7 vs. 10 and 8 vs. 9. The winners of those series will go on to play the top seeds in the second round. It has yet to be determined whether those series will be a best of five or best of seven. Both the conference and league finals will be a best of seven.
The eight losers in the opening round will join the seven teams that did not qualify for the postseason in the draft lottery, which the league still plans on holding in June, even though we won't know who the losers of the opening round will be until August. They will be designated teams A through H.
Some observations on the playoff format.
There will be a total of five rounds, so even if the first two rounds are best of five, it is conceivable that the team that wins the Cup could wind up playing as many as 31 games, three more than a typical playoff season. And that means the toughest championship in professional sports to win is about to become even tougher.
Both Montreal and Chicago will qualify for the tournament under this plan, even though neither team had a winning record. While this is not the first time the NHL has had teams with sub-500 records in the playoffs, there is, understandably, some concern that either or both could pull off an upset over a better team. Last year, the Tampa Bay Lightning - the President's Trophy winner - got swept by the Columbus Blue Jackets. In a best of five, all it would take is a couple of lucky bounces here and there for lightning to strike twice, no pun intended. Still, the likelihood of that happening is fairly remote. As good a goalie as Carey Price is, the Canadiens were still a mediocre team at best; and as far as the Blackhawks are concerned, Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane's best days are way behind them. Shame on the NHL if either makes it to the third round, much less the Cup finals.
The three round robin games that the top four teams in each conference will have to play to determine seeding is extremely unfair to the Boston Bruins. When the season was suspended back in March, the Bruins had an eight-point lead over the second place Lightning. Thanks to this format, they could drop all the way down to fourth, meaning if each favorite team in the opening (play-in) round prevails, they would be stuck playing a tougher opponent in the next round. Beantown should be pissed.
The Rangers caught a huge break. They were on the outside looking in when play was halted. Now, thanks to Providence, they're first-round opponent is the Carolina Hurricanes, a team they went 4 - 0 against during the regular season, and a team they stack up very well against. In fact, of all the first-round series, the Blueshirts have the best shot at pulling off an upset. In fact, here's another tidbit to nibble on. If the current seeding among the top four does not change and the league doesn't reseed after the opening round, the Rangers next opponent would be the Washington Capitals and not the Boston Bruins. While Caps are hardly chopped liver, I'd much rather play them than the Bruins. In other words, for a team that's still considered in the early stages of a rebuild, they could make it all the way to the third round. How 'bout them apples?
All things considered, this was the best possible way for the NHL to resume play. It rewards the top teams with a bye; it gives teams that were only a few points out of a playoff spot with ten games to go a new lease on life; and by expanding the tournament to include cities like Chicago and Montreal with a postseason berth, it will generate ad revenue from those cities, which will help the bottom line of the league going into next season. Kudos to Gary Bettman for not blowing this.
Given that the NBA still doesn't know whether it will play the balance of its regular season before starting the playoffs and that Major League Baseball is currently locked in a dispute between ownership and the union over how much revenue the players will give up in a shortened season, hockey might be the only game in town this summer. The last time that happened was never.
I don't know about you but I can't wait for the puck to drop.
