Toronto will play Tampa Bay again in the first round, something we could see coming months ago. The impetus for the current system is mostly because it emphasizes rivalries - and rivalries tend to be good for sport.īut when rivalries bleed into repetitiveness, that’s not good for business. Sometimes, that works for him, and other times, it creates blind spots. Why is Gary Bettman and the NHL so averse to a one-to-eight seeding playoff format? Wouldn’t it create more excitement and better overall playoffs? - Bear B.īecause Gary Bettman is primarily a status quo kind of guy. And if they were wrapping up the regular season this week, instead of the vast majority of teams playing games that mean little, who wouldn’t be in favor of that (other than commissioner Gary Bettman of course)?įrom the Archives – Mario Lemieux celebrates the 1992 Stanley Cup championship. It should be contained mostly to the fall, winter and spring months. Nowadays, no one thinks twice about it anymore. I remember the second year of Pittsburgh’s run, when the Penguins played the Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup Final, the final game took place on June 1 - and that was a significant storyline, that the NHL schedule spilled into June. The last time that happened was back in 1991, the first of Pittsburgh’s two back-to-back Stanley Cup championships. 1 and completed the regular season by March 31, then you would also be guaranteed that the playoffs are over by the end of May. That would slice about three weeks off the regular season. To me, the ideal regular-season number is somewhere between 72 and 76 games. It briefly rose to 84 games (to accommodate the ill-fated neutral-site games, and then has been at 82 games for most of the past quarter century, when the schedule hasn’t been impacted by a lockout or a pandemic. From there, it went to 74 games, then 76, then 78, and then settled in at 80 games for 18 years.
Now, there’s a difference between the practical answer - which is to expect the status quo to continue - and what should happen in a perfect world.įrom 1949-50 until the last year of the Original Six, the NHL played a 70-game schedule. But this is also a broader question about scheduling and the fact that many of us believe the NHL season starts too late, ends too late, and is far too long at 82 regular-season games. The NHL re-introduced the bye weeks this season as part of getting the schedule back to its normal cadence, and most players love it - a chance to take a short vacation, often to a sunny destination, heal minor injuries and generally recharge the batteries for the stretch run. Why the mandated week off around the All-Star break? That’s the time of year when people want to watch the game. Is it just me, or does the NHL season drag for everyone? Except for a wild-card slot or two, in these last 20 games, the good teams will try to stay healthy, and the lousy ones will try to lose, lose and then lose some more. (Note: Some questions have been lightly edited for style and clarity.)
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