NHL plans 24-team playoff format

The Bruins won the 2019-20 Presidents’ Trophy on Tuesday for finishing in first place overall in the NHL.

They also learned they face the prospect of going into the playoffs as the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference.

Those were just a couple of takeaways from plans the NHL announced to award the Stanley Cup and complete a season that was paused on March 12 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Barring any health and safety matters that could still scrap [...]

The Bruins won the 2019-20 Presidents’ Trophy on Tuesday for finishing in first place overall in the NHL.

They also learned they face the prospect of going into the playoffs as the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference.

Those were just a couple of takeaways from plans the NHL announced to award the Stanley Cup and complete a season that was paused on March 12 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Barring any health and safety matters that could still scrap the plans, and with much still to be determined, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announced on Tuesday that 24 teams —12 per conference — will play on, but not before late in July, and that the league’s seven other franchises must now wait until a delayed start to 2020-21 to play again.

Bettman said games will resume without fans in two "hub" cities, neither of which has been selected yet. Boston and TD Garden are not among the 10 cities under consideration. Seven are in Western Conference markets while three — Pittsburgh, Columbus, and Toronto — are in the East. Toronto is one of three Canadian cities under consideration, but Bettman said that if current rules requiring a 14-day self-quarantine period for those entering from outside the country aren’t relaxed, they won’t be able to host.

The Bruins, who finished first in the overall standings and Eastern Conference with 100 points over 70 games (.714 points percentage), will play a round-robin tournament against the teams that ranked second through fourth (Lightning, Capitals, Flyers) in the conference to determine their first-round seeding. Games will be played under regular-season overtime and shootout rules, and any ties in the round-robin standings will be broken by regular-season points percentage.

As the round robin is contested, so will four best-of-five series between the next eight teams in the conference in what is being called the qualifying round. The NHL and NHL Players Association haven’t determined yet whether matchups for the first playoff round will be determined by pre-existing brackets, or whether teams will be seeded.

Also to be decided are whether the first and second playoff rounds will be best-of-5 or best-of-seven. Conference finals and the Stanley Cup final will be best-of-seven series, and Bettman held out the possibility that those series could be played in home markets.

In going ahead with the top 12 teams in each conference, the decision officially ends the seasons of the league’s bottom seven teams. They are Anaheim, Buffalo, Detroit, Los Angeles, New Jersey, Ottawa and San Jose.

Those seven teams can now turn their attention to the draft lottery, which will take place June 26 on what was scheduled to be the night of the first round. Eight other teams will be eligible, and the order of the top three picks may not end up being decided until after the play-in round.

At present, the league is waiting to move into Phase 2 of its return-to-play plan, which calls for small groups of players to begin skating in their home markets, perhaps as early as next week. Phase 3 is training camps, which Bettman doesn’t envision starting before July 1, and which will last an undetermined length of time.

Bettman said voluntary workouts could begin in early June and formal camps aren't expected to begin before July 1. Those camps are expected to last roughly three weeks as players return to the ice for the first time in months.

"Any plan for the resumption of play by definition cannot be perfect," Bettman said. "But we believe we have constructed an overall plan that includes all teams that as a practical matter might have had a chance of qualifying for the playoffs when the season was paused, and this plan will produce a worthy Stanley Cup champion who will have run the postseason gauntlet that is unique to the NHL."

With Associated Press reports