The most surprising thing I discovered during NHL All-Star Weekend wasn’t Sidney Crosby‘s affinity for dunk tanks or that Montreal doesn’t have a single Chipotle restaurant for Nick Suzuki to claim his year’s supply of bowls and burritos. Although those were stunning in their own right — man should not live on poutine alone.
No, it was that NHL players, by and large, do not want teams added to the Stanley Cup playoffs.
“Keep it at 16 teams. You have to make it really hard to make it,” Colorado Avalanche star Nathan MacKinnon told me.
“I think 16 is good. You’ve got to deserve the spot in the playoffs. That’s the reality,” Carolina Hurricanes winger Andrei Svechnikov said.
“You’re pretty beat up and exhausted at the end of it. It’s a good sweet spot that they found,” Vegas Golden Knights center Chandler Stephenson said.
Most of the players I’ve spoken to about playoff expansion share this mindset: Bringing in more teams would cheapen their arduous regular season and dull the triumph of playoff qualification.
“It’s hard to make the playoffs, as opposed to having more and more teams can make it in,” one veteran NHL player told me. “It’s tough to make it into 16 of 32 spots. That’s what you work all season for. Even if you lose in the first round, you made it, you know?”
None of the players I spoke with were slamming their fists on the table and demanding playoff expansion. At best, some players whose teams are currently outside of playoff seeding might have been … shall we say, a little more accepting of the idea.
“I like it the way it is. I don’t know how much more expanding it would bring to it,” Brock Nelson of the New York Islanders said, “but I’m open-minded.”
Troy Terry of the Anaheim Ducks, who has yet to appear in a Stanley Cup playoff game during his six-season career, went a step beyond that.
“I think more, as a sports fan in general, watching the NBA format with the play-in game, it would be fun to watch [that way]. It does bring an extra round of excitement,” he told ESPN colleague Kristen Shilton. “It’s not a full seven-game series, but I think when they play one game in that elimination [format] in that little play-in game, I think it’s exciting.”
Yes! It’s very exciting! Which is why the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball have all expanded their playoff fields within the past three years.
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The NFL added two wild-card teams to bring its field to 14 teams in 2020.
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MLB added two teams to create a 12-team playoff field in 2022, with a thrilling opening round of four three-game series.
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As Terry mentioned, the NBA added a play-in tournament for its seventh through 10th seeds in the 2020-21 season, featuring an ingenious system that managed to expand the playoff field to 20 teams while offering some protection for the seventh and eighth seeds in the play-in round.
The NBA play-in round was a plus from a revenue perspective but also offered some additional postseason drama. Seeding became critical. Otherwise “lost” seasons were transformed into late-season playoff pushes. During the two postseasons that the NBA used the “Page-McIntyre system,” the No. 9 seed advanced to the proper eight-team conference bracket in three of four play-in rounds.
Some NHL players recognized that potential in their own league.
“If you look at the teams just outside of the playoffs, there’s some teams that, if they got in, could challenge. You see that every year,” Winnipeg Jets defenseman Josh Morrissey said.
Consider the race in the East under an expanded playoff field format. Let’s say the wild cards remain in place and they face the next two teams in the conference standings. You’d have the Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins doing all they can to get out of a play-in round; the New York Islanders, Buffalo Sabres and Florida Panthers in a tight race for the final two postseason berths; and the Ottawa Senators, Philadelphia Flyers and Detroit Red Wings right behind them, seeing their own unlikely tickets to the postseason.
In the West, the entire Pacific Division would be at risk of falling into the play-in round, while the Nashville Predators and even the St. Louis Blues would have new paths to the postseason out of the Central.
The only time the NHL has expanded its playoff field beyond 16 teams was in the pandemic bubble postseason of 2020. While no one should read too much into anything that happened in that surreal, anomalous summer tournament — advice that the Vancouver Canucks unfortunately never took — the fact is that the expanded field offered surprises. The 16-team bracket created from a 24-team playoff field included two No. 12 seeds (Chicago and Montreal), a No. 11 seed (Calgary) and a No. 9 seed (Columbus). Although none of those teams advanced any further in the tournament, they created early commotion.
Even as a proponent of expanding the playoffs, I think 24 teams is way too many. My sweet spot is 20, like in the NBA. That still means 38% of the league is tabulating its draft lottery odds instead of competing in the postseason. I think that’s a sufficient split of playoff and non-playoff teams, but in fairness, my mathematical perspective has always been a little warped. I grew up with a version of the NHL where 16 out of 21 teams would qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs, leaving four teams and the Quebec Nordiques outside the tournament annually.
The NHL has had 16 playoff teams since 1979-80. It’s the only total today’s NHL players have known, either as fans growing up or as players competing in a “normal” postseason.
“I think the players are averse to change. But they also don’t see a value in what it’s in it for them to change it,” one NHL player agent told me recently. “The first question any player is going to ask is ‘what’s in it for me?'”
This is an important point. If the argument against playoff expansion is “this is just the way it’s always been” or “it should be difficult to make the playoffs,” then the counterargument must explain how a new format would (A) improve the product, and (B) maintain the competitiveness of both the regular season and the postseason. I think if you took a bunch of “Keep it at 16” guys and showed them the mechanics of the NBA playoff format — where the Nos. 7 and 8 seeds get two cracks to win one game and advance to the 16-team tournament — their fears of competitive balance might be soothed.
Well, at least a little.
“You’re going to have players worried about playing 82 games in the regular season, finishing 15th or 16th in the league, and then getting knocked out in a play-in round. That’s just how it is,” the agent said.
That’s where the players are concerned. But stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The owners and players aren’t on the same page when it comes to an NHL issue.
I’ve spoken to members of the board of governors through the years who are in favor of adding playoff teams. The Athletic polled 12 of them at the governors meeting last December and found all 12 in favor of playoff expansion. That you haven’t heard names attached to those opinions speaks to why we haven’t gotten additional playoff teams, despite that support: NHL commissioner Gary Bettman doesn’t think they’re required.
“You’re looking to fix a problem that doesn’t exist,” he said at the board of governors meeting.
There’s no reason to bring up the topic if the league’s most important decision-maker stands in opposition to it. In his 30 years as commissioner, Bettman has always had an underappreciated traditionalist streak. I think that’s part of his reasoning to keep it at 16 teams. He also has voiced skepticism about expansion’s revenue windfall for hockey, even in light of the money the expanded postseasons in other sports have generated.
“Diluting the regular season and diluting the playoffs doesn’t make much sense to me,” he said.
“The last time we polled the general managers on this, which was only two years ago, two-thirds of them were in favor of keeping the playoffs the way they are. Doesn’t mean that you don’t revisit it. But it’s not some burning issue,” deputy commissioner Bill Daly said at the All-Star Game.
“But to be clear,” Bettman interjected, “we do value input from the players.”
That’s good to hear. While they’re cool on playoff expansion, the players we spoke with at the All-Star Game are hot for another playoff format change: Going back to the 1-through-8 conference format, which is what the NHL used before flipping to the wild card in 2013-14.
That’s the format Sidney Crosby played in for his first postseasons in the NHL. The Penguins captain championed a return to that playoff bracket last weekend, especially with the way it theoretically rewards regular-season success with easier first-round opponents.
“I like 1-to-8 just because the regular season is as difficult as it is. Teams should be rewarded,” Crosby said. “I guess that’s probably the best way you can be rewarded, even though there isn’t a ton of difference. I like that version a little bit better.”
As Sid said, there might not be much variation from the wild card to 1-through-8. As of Tuesday, both versions produced the same matchups in the Eastern Conference. The difference, however, was that the New York Rangers were one point behind Tampa Bay for a potential first-round matchup with the Toronto Maple Leafs, instead of the Lightning being nine points ahead of the Sabres, the fourth-place team in the Atlantic.
Players such as MacKinnon weren’t fans of a format that already had one matchup basically cemented.
“The Toronto-Tampa thing is silly,” the Avalanche star said. “You come in second in the conference, and you play the third-place team in your conference the first round? I don’t understand that.”
MacKinnon’s former teammate Nazem Kadri, now with the Calgary Flames, also lobbied for a return to the 1-through-8 format.
“Two top teams, if they’re in the same division, someone gets bounced in the first round,” he said. “So, for me, I’d like to see the 1-through-8, but I understand why they did this format.”
Formats come and formats go. Bettman said if the players are dissatisfied with the current postseason setup, the first step toward changing it would come from within the competition committee, comprised of players and team executives.
“That’s actually the best place to talk about it,” Bettman said. “The debate over 1-vs.-8 … it’s not just that. Then you have to look at changing the wild card and you’ve got to start looking at the matchups in terms of how many times everybody plays everybody else if you’re having conference-based playoffs. So it’s not as simple as saying ‘I’d like 1-vs.-8.’ It involves a whole host of other issues.”
With due respect to the players, I’m a hill-to-die-on expand the playoffs guy. Bring the total to 10 teams in each conference and follow the NBA’s template for play-in rounds. To make things extra spicy, reorganize the final four teams by regular-season record, forgoing geographic designations in lieu of potential rivalry matchups for the Cup.
But if I can’t have that, I’m down for a return to the 1-vs.-8 format. It adds more jockeying for position and, as Crosby said, rewards regular-season success better than the current format.
It’ll also freshen up the matchups. The Rangers have made the playoffs six times under the wild-card format. They’ve faced the Penguins in four of those postseasons. The Minnesota Wild have played in 10 playoff rounds in the wild-card era. Half of them have been against either the Chicago Blackhawks or the St. Louis Blues.
“I’d rather the old format for sure,” Kadri said. “It feels too repetitive sometimes. You see the same teams in the first and second rounds every single year it seems.”
It’s time for a change. Maybe to something old. Maybe to something new. Maybe to something no one’s even considered yet.
As I found out last weekend, NHL players are full of surprises.
Jersey Foul of the week
“Siri, show me perfection …”
Brilliant! #Isles pic.twitter.com/gVdKW9cdt4
— 𝐈𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐅𝐢𝐱 (@IslesFix) February 8, 2023
This Tribute Jersey is one of the most inventive Jersey Fouls we’ve ever come across. It takes a New York Islanders jersey featuring Anthony Beauvillier on the back and transforms it into a Bo — sorry, “Beau” — Horvat jersey, who was acquired by New York in a trade involving Beauvillier. Seamlessly going from one player’s jersey to the player for whom he was traded makes for an instant Jersey Fouls classic. Kudos to this Islanders fans for seeing the beau-tiful symmetry.
Video of the week
NHL Street is a collaboration between the league and Tim Hortons to “bring a more accessible form of hockey to underrepresented and diverse youth in communities across Canada.” The NHL has spent millions of dollars over the years trying to create new fans by introducing them to the game through street and roller hockey. Which got me thinking about the NHL All-Star Game.
A lot of us have spent the past week trying to envision ways to bolster the All-Star weekend’s appeal. Why not have a street hockey game as part of the skills competition? You could have taped it at the beach in Fort Lauderdale or held it in the parking lot of the arena — weather permitting, of course.
Street and roller hockey are great ways to give young fans a feel for the game. But the stars they want to emulate are on the ice. I think it would better connect them to the NHL if they saw Connor McDavid, Jack Hughes or Nathan MacKinnon playing the game they’re playing, on the same surface and using the same gear. Heck, pick a neighborhood in Toronto next year, shut down the street, grab a couple of nets and “GAME ON.” (Again, weather permitting … and Toronto ain’t Fort Lauderdale.)
Winners and losers of the week
Winner: Sidney Crosby
Things I never thought we’d see 10 years ago: Sidney Crosby at an All-Star Game in 2023; Sidney Crosby falling into a dunk tank at that All-Star Game; Sidney Crosby participating in a shootout trick shot event as Alex Ovechkin’s partner. When you can glimpse the sunset of your career, you want to experience as much as you can until you can’t anymore. I love this version of Sid. He made the weekend fun.
Loser: Wayne Gretzky
The man who rewrote the record book for his sport earned just 2% of the support in Morning Consult’s poll of the greatest athletes of all time. That tied him with several athletes, including former two-sport star Bo Jackson. Michael Jordan led the poll with 19% of the vote. Hmmm … Bo and Wayne at the bottom, Michael on top. The next ProStars meeting is going to be awkward.
Winner: Letters to fans
I love this tradition the New York Rangers started where teams that are rebuilding send out “we’re in this together, but it won’t be easy!” letters to fans. The Philadelphia Flyers sent one out from John Tortorella that said, “We need you with us. We’re going to get this right. We’re going to make you proud.” Build (or rebuild) right, and the fans will be on board with it. This kind of “rah-rah” messaging is welcome.
Loser: Flyers season-ticket holders
The Flyers announced that “for season ticket members returning next season, your 2023 April games are on us.” The upside is that if they renew their season tickets, the Flyers will credit their accounts for those April tickets to use on their 2023-24 season tickets. The downside is that they need to buy 2023-24 Philadelphia Flyers season tickets.
Winner: Marty Walsh
The next career step for many Cabinet members who leave their posts might include lobbying or seeking another office or another job in the administration. But Walsh, the U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Biden, is expected to take over the NHL Players Association. The players I’ve spoken to who interacted with him were really impressed with his preparation and outlook on future labor talks. As one source on the players’ side noted: He’s a “unicorn,” in that he’s a hockey guy from outside the sport, who doesn’t have any history at the negotiating table with Gary Bettman or the owners.
Loser: Politics learning curves
Walsh does have some history with a couple of the owners away from the negotiating table — the Jacobs family, who own the Boston Bruins and donated to Walsh’s Boston mayoral campaign. This apparently spooked the rank-and-file just learning about Walsh, as The Daily Beast quoted one player as saying, “If he has close ties with the Bruins owner, you’d have to assume he has ties to other owners.” With due respect to the checkered history of the NHLPA and previous accusations of coziness with the owners — like when Paul Kelly was let go in 2009 for reasons that included being chummy with Bettman — the political game demands candidates take donations and build relationships with a variety of people. That’s political reality. Besides, it’s not as if Marty Walsh took $13,000 from the head of the NHL Board of Governors knowing he’d run the NHLPA six years later.
Puck headlines
Watch The Drop
We had a blast making “The Drop” at the NHL All-Star Game, filling the show with mascot weirdness, skills competition and my giant pink suit. It’s evergreen! Enjoy!