Cam Neely didn’t get his way, in any way, when it came to the first segment of the NHL’s resumption of a season altered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Bruins’ president doesn’t mind the way things are set up from here, though.
The B’s, who eliminated the Hurricanes over five games in Round 1 of the Eastern Conference playoffs, were still waiting for the completion of the Flyers-Canadiens series to determine their second-round opponent as well as their new seeding position. Neely, however, thinks his team should have been allowed to hold the No. 1 seed it earned by posting the NHL’s best regular-season throughout what he calls “the actual playoffs.”
The NHL’s Return-To-Play plan allowed 12 teams per conference to resume competition, based on points percentages through a regular season that was shut down on March 12. The top four in each conference faced each other in a three-game round robin; the next eight competed in best-of-5 “qualifying” series.
The fact that round-robin standings determined conference seeds 1-4 bugged Neely, as it forced the B’s to re-earn the No. 1 status they earned through 70 games of the regular season. He liked the format even less when the Bruins, who chose game-building over game results, lost all three round-robin games and sank to the No. 4 seed for Round 1.
“It was a little upsetting,” Neely said on Thursday afternoon from the Eastern Conference bubble in Toronto. “You win the Presidents’ Trophy (best NHL record), but you’re the fourth seed in the playoffs. I get the fact that we needed to play some games while the other teams were in the qualifying round, but it was a little disappointing.”
Neely is happy that this format reseeds teams after each round. It’s a departure from the system used since 2013-14, when the NHL adopted a bracket formula that admitted the top three teams in each division, with two wildcard entries per conference. The system was criticized because first-round series against the second- and third-place teams in each division often knocked out some of the league’s top teams too early — especially in the league’s stronger divisions.
“I do like (reseeding),” said Neely, whose team was assured of moving up at least one spot for Round 2 when the No. 3 Capitals were ousted in Round 1 by the No. 7 Islanders. “I think it’s more fair, if you will. I’ve suggested it in the past, and I’ll continue to suggest that.”
Neely’s not on board with suggestions that the NHL expand its playoff pool past its current 16 teams with more “play-in” rounds — an idea has gained traction since this summer’s qualifying series produced some significant upsets: The No. 12 teams in the East (Canadiens) and West (Blackhawks) knocked off highly-regarded No. 5 seeds (Penguins and Oilers, respectively), while the No. 11 Coyotes eliminated the No. 6 Predators.
The Canadiens, Blackhawks and Coyotes would have failed to qualify if the NHL stuck to a 16-team playoff format to resume the season. The No. 9 Blue Jackets, who bounced the No. 8 Maple Leafs in a play-in, wouldn’t have qualified, either: They had an identical .579 points percentage to the Leafs, but would have lost a tiebreaker.
“I don’t know if I’m necessarily in favor” of adding more teams to the postseason, said Neely, who spent a chunk of his Hall of Fame career hearing the NHL criticized because “we had 16 teams in the playoffs, when there were only 21 in the league.”
That was the case from 1979-80, when the NHL added four teams from the defunct World Hockey Association (Hartford, Edmonton, Quebec, Winnipeg), until 1991-92, when the Sharks were added. The league will hit 32 teams when the Kraken (Seattle) go live in 2021-22.
“I feel like you play 82 regular-season games for a reason,” Neely said. “And I know there are teams fighting right to the end — a couple of years there (2014-15 and ’15-16), we lost out by a point. But right now, I don’t know if it’s necessary to make a change.”
And with the Bruins, who reached Game 7 of last year’s Stanley Cup Final, through to Round 2 for the third straight season, Neely has moved past the round-robin situation.
“Our guys needed a tuneup,” he said. “We are where we are, and we’ve moved on from that.”