hockey is for everyone bitch

There have been a lot of playoff formats throughout professional hockey's very long history, as the league changed & teams were added over time. But the one people loved best was around from the mid-90s to 2014. It was pretty simple. You had two conferences (just like now) with two divisions in each conference (just like now). The difference was in how the playoff teams were seeded.

First let's discuss the current format. I'll use the Western Conference as an example. Right now it's split into 2 divisions, the Central & the Pacific. At the end of the regular season, the top 3 scoring teams in each division automatically move on (Avalanche-121, Stars-112 & Wild-104 for Central; Golden Knights-95, Oilers-93 & Ducks-92 for Pacific). In addition, the next 2 best scoring teams in the conference take the 2 wild card spots (Mammoth-92 & Kings-90) .

Here's where things get a little funky with the current format. In the first round, the overall #1 Avalanche get to go up against the #2 wild card team, the Kings. Which is fine, because that gives the best team the best shot to advance. BUT the #2 & #3 teams in each division have to play EACH OTHER. So the Stars with their 112 points & the Wild with their 104 points, who were the 2nd & 3rd best teams in the entire Western Conference, had to face each other in the very first round & one of them got eliminated. (This season it was the Stars.)

It gets worse. In the 2nd round, the winner of that #2 vs #3 game (the Wild) then faces the winner of the #1 vs WC#2 game (the Avalanche). So now you've got a situation where the toughest team in the conference (the Avs) has probably won their first matchup against that second wild card team (the Kings, which they did in a 4-0 sweep) and has to face that #2 vs #3 team winner (the Wild) in the SECOND round. Pretty unfair for both teams, and a really solid team will once again get knocked out of the playoffs. (In this case, the Wild lost & the Avs advanced.)

Side note: The same thing was happening in the Eastern Conference, with the Canadiens & the Lightning (both at 106 pts) having to face off against each other in the 1st round. (In that case, Tampa Bay got knocked out after it went 7 games). The Canadiens went on to face the #1 Sabres and won, which really sucked for the Sabres who had waited like 15 years to get back into the playoffs. It sucked for the Canadiens too because it was a really tough series that went 7 games, so they went into the 3rd round pretty beat up after two tough back-to-back 7-game series against two of the best teams in the league.

Ok, moving on to the old system. It was pretty simple! The top 8 teams in each Conference would move on, regardless of division, and the matchups went like this:

1st vs 8th place

2nd vs 7th place

3rd vs 6th place

4th vs 5th place

(In 2026 this would have translated to these 1st round matchups:

Avs vs Kings

Stars vs Ducks

Wild vs Mammoth

VGK vs Oilers

Hurricanes vs Flyers

Sabres vs Penguins

Lightning vs Senators

Canadiens vs Bruins

So with the old system, you were rewarded based on how well you did through the regular season. And where you were seeded also rewarded you, since the better you did, the "worse" your 1st round opponent would be.

(There's more nuance here about teams getting re-seeded after each round & home advantage, etc but I'm trying to keep this simple.) (And probably failing lol)

The argument for the new system is it's supposed to create division rivalries that audiences are more invested in. (They already have teams in the same division facing each other 3-4x a season to encourage this.) It's also meant to create playoff matchups within the same time zone & in closer locations to reduce travel.

But I'm not sure how successful it's actually been at creating rivalries. In my opinion, that's not really something that can be manufactured. Rivalries already exist across different locations & different divisions because of history/ specific events during games. So all they're really accomplishing here is knocking out very good teams early in the playoffs.

Ultimately I agree, the old playoff format is more fair. I think the best teams should have the best chances to advance, and it makes for really fun hockey (especially in later rounds). But Bettman has been adamant that he won't change the current format, so unfortunately we're stuck with it for now.