What's the Best Stanley Cup Playoff Format?

The Ottawa Senators will miss the playoffs for a seventh straight season, but with any luck, they'll be back to the spring dance sooner rather than later. Someday, the Senators hope to not just be one of the teams in the playoffs, but one of the best ones.

And for a couple of those teams' fan bases every year, complaining about the NHL playoff format has become a rite of spring. Each year, there's a team or two that can't believe that, after their amazing regular season, they have to face such an elite opponent in the first round.

For example, after the season they've had, it doesn't seem reasonable that the Boston Bruins, with their current 107 points, might have to face the Tampa Bay Lighting in round one. Toronto has complained about that particular draw in recent years as well. 

The Dallas Stars are the number-one team in the West. They're tracking to face the defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights in round one. Not ideal.

So what's the best playoff format? The one we have? A true divisional tourney with no wild card? 1 vs 8? 1 vs 16? Let number one choose their opponent?

The answer is subjective and you first need to understand that there is no perfect system. You also need establish whether fairness or excitement is your goal. 

If you're looking for true fairness, you'd eliminate the playoffs completely like soccer does and just give the Stanley Cup to the team with the most points in the regular season. If you establish yourself as the best team over six months and 82 games, that's a better measure of excellence than the status quo.

But where's the fun in that? Few things in sports can compare to the excitement of a seven-game NHL playoff series. And excitement equals ratings and money, so most pro leagues tend to veer in that direction.

But fairness can't be ignored either, like the league did when they briefly brought in a best of three first round playoff series in the 1970s. Exciting? Yes. Fair? Absolutely not.

COVID brought us a play-in round for one playoff season, which expanded the number of possible playoff teams to 24. In my dream scenario, the league keeps it at 16 playoff teams, four rounds, and each series a best-of-seven. And I tend to think most fans feel the same way.

I'd also be a fan of experimenting with the superior regular season team (by standings) getting more than just one extra home game. In a first place vs eighth place matchup, what's wrong with giving the first place team five home games, while the lesser team gets two? Instead of the current 2–2–1–1–1 format, make it 2-2-3. Don't like it? Be better next year. 

And we could also fall into a discussion about a new rule that prevents teams from hiding players on LTIR, only to magically get healthy for opening night of the playoffs. Keep the cap rules in place for the post-season.

With all that said, let's go through a few of the pros and cons of each possible format.

1 vs 16 League-Wide Format

The NHL went with this in 1979-80, the first time they expanded the playoffs to 16 teams. In round one, the very best regular season team gets to play the 16th best regular season team.

Pros: This gives the best team a huge reward by giving them the very worst opponent (by standings) in the league in every round. That seems fair.

Cons: This can set up some odd matchups between teams that have zero rivalry. It also eliminates the tournament within the tournament, with no divisional play or conference titles. And it makes for some difficult travel and a jet lag issue when eastern teams have to play out west.

1 vs 8 Conference-Based Format

Pros: Fairness. And you can still crown conference champions. You don't lose much in the way of excitement since rivalries are still strong. Teams play conference rivals (3 times) almost as much as division rivals (3-4 times).

Cons: There are no divisional playoffs or divisional titles. If the 1 vs 8 format is adopted, you might as well kill the divisions and just go with two conferences. 

True Divisional Tournament

What if we eliminated the existing wild card and went back to a true tournament format? Each division going off 1 vs 4, 2 vs 3.

Pros: Teams play for a true division championship within the playoffs. With 8 teams, winning a division title is a huge accomplishment. In this format, you don't have Tampa or some Atlantic team drifting over to play for the Metro title. You're also looking at building rivalries, with the same teams battling every year to get out of their division. And hate is good for playoff hockey excitement.

Cons: This only worsens the current outcry that the playoffs aren't fair. This would have some teams missing the playoffs entirely, while teams with inferior records from weaker divisions get in.

12-Team Format with Division Winners Getting a First Round Bye

Pros: This promotes fairness and places a massive emphasis on regular season success and divisional play. The regular season division winners get a banner and get to skip the first round. This ends any discussion of top teams having to face tough opponents. Now they don't face any opponent. The eight lower playoff teams, ranked 1 vs 8, duke it out in round one and the four surviving teams advance to round two, and we go 1 vs 8 again.

Cons: Teams would hate losing four teams' worth of playoff revenues. And fans would only have four first-round playoff series to enjoy. The first-round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs is awesome. No one is asking for less playoffs.

Top Teams Get to Choose Their Opponent

Now we're going off the board. Whether it's a league-wide 1 vs 16 or conference-based 1 vs 8, what if you let the first place team choose their opponent? Let the number one team decide who they think they have the best chance of beating. Then let the number two team choose from who's left and so on. It checks the fairness box for sure.

Pros: It has the benefit of infuriating/motivating the chosen team and its fan base. How dare you choose us as the easiest team to beat? That's guaranteed to lead to a fiery playoff series. Remember Toronto's "We want Florida" chants last year? You can be sure the Panthers heard about that.

Cons: Like Phil Kessel being chosen last in the all-star draft, teams probably don't want the embarrassment of being thought of as the worst.

The PWHL has adopted this format. Four teams make the playoffs and the top team gets to choose their semifinal opponent. So it will be interesting to monitor. Might be fun.

Round Robin

Nope, nope, nope. While it might be a fair system, it's all "cons" after that.

You would need to play exactly 120 playoff games. Get ready for the playoffs to drift into late July. Last season's NHL playoffs went 89 games and everyone felt like that went on too long. Once you get beyond eight teams, round robin becomes impractical.

Besides that, you lose the excitement. There would be tons of those games rendered meaningless by the midway point in the schedule. And the Stanley Cup winners might find out they've won while sitting in a sports bar. No one wants that.

So those are some of the options and, with the exception of round robin, they all have their merits. All in all, since conference rivalries are currently being fostered just as much as divisional ones, I'd probably favour a 1 vs 8 format. But choosing your own opponent would be intriguing to experiment with, since it ramps up the hate.

At one point, I thought I favoured a heavier regular season's worth of divisional games and then a true divisional playoffs. But the COVID-inspired season a couple of years ago and the all-Canadian division showed me that we don't really need to see the same opponent nine or ten times in the same year.

As for the current complaints, the reality is there are no easy opponents at playoff time. Some teams may be easier, but no opponent is easy. That's a thing of the distant past. No one with a record of 8 games under 500 is getting in anymore. Everyone has a great record. And how badly do you want a 7th or 8th ranked opponent who's been playing at a pressure-packed playoff-level intensity for a long time now just to get into the post-season?

To win a Cup, you have to show you can beat other elite teams. And that's true in every format.