With Dallas facing Minnesota in the first round, it's a guarantee that one of the top-3 teams in the Western Conference will be eliminated early on in the playoffs.
To be the best, you have to beat the best.
That was how Dallas Stars GM Jim Nill recently answered a question about having to face the Minnesota Wild in the first round of the playoffs. However, not everyone is happy that the second- and third-best teams in the Western Conference will be seeing one another right out of the gate.
"They have to fix it," Stars center Matt Duchene told The Hockey News following Dallas' 6-5 win against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Monday night. “I’m dead serious.”
No question, this has been a difficult year for defenders of the NHL’s current playoff format.
Whether you prefer 1v8 or 1v16 or something even more drastic, anything seems preferable in a season where either Dallas or Minnesota will be eliminated in the first round. Or that the winner of that much-anticipated series will then potentially then play the Presidents' Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche in the second round.
In other words, the NHL could see two of the top-3 teams in the West — and arguably the entire league — knocked out before the conference final.
It doesn’t seem fair. And with the playoffs set to begin this weekend, players are finally starting to speak out.
"It’s not just us," said Duchene. "There are teams that are eliminated that are ahead of teams that aren’t. It’s all over the league. And it’s not just us, because we have to go through the best teams."
Indeed, it's not just the Stars and the Wild who are affected by the way the standings have gone this season. After Colorado, Dallas and Minnesota, the next five-best teams in the West have records that are so bad that they wouldn't even be in a playoff spot if they were playing in the East.
Meanwhile, the standings are so skewed that the New York Islanders were mathematically eliminated on despite being tied for the ninth-most wins in the league. And yet, the Los Angeles Kings punched their ticket to the post-season while being tied for the seventh-fewest wins.
When asked whether the league should adopt a 1v16 format that would properly reward the teams for finishing near the top of the standings, Duchene instead suggested a 1v8 format that keeps teams in their respective conferences.
"No, you’ve got to keep it West and East,” he said. “That’s all I’ll say on that.”
Under a 1v8 format, Dallas would play the seventh-place Edmonton Oilers, while the Wild would play the sixth-place Anaheim Ducks. That's not exactly an ideal match-up for the Stars, who lost in back-to-back years to the Oilers in the conference final.
But it's probably more fair than the current format, which has Dallas (110 points) playing Minnesota (102 points), while Edmonton (91 points) plays Anaheim (90 points).
Then again, a tough first-round opponent is nothing new for the Stars.
Last year, the Stars had to play the Colorado Avalanche and then the Presidents' Trophy-winning Winnipeg Jets in the second round. Two years ago, Dallas faced the defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights in the first round and then the Avalanche in the second round.
Maybe Nill is right. Maybe, as he told TSN on Monday, “If you’re going to be the Stanley Cup champion, you’ve got to beat the best."
Still, an easier path would be nice for a change — especially if it helps the 35-year-old Duchene get closer to that elusive goal of winning a championship.
"I’m not impatient at all," said Duchene. "Is there more behind me than ahead of me? Absolutely. But I just signed a four-year deal in the summer and I’m in Year One of it. So I don’t see this team not having a chance to win in my career, that’s for sure. At least four years, if not more.
"That’s the cool part, when you’ve got a good team you’ve got a chance to win every year. And that’s what we have here."
That is, if Dallas can get out of the first round.