The NHL officially has a return plan. Here’s how the Panthers made new playoff format
The NHL officially has a plan in place to resume and conclude its season, and the Florida Panthers will be involved.
The NHL plans to finish the season at two central locations with an expanded playoff field of 24 teams, meaning the Panthers, who were on the outside of the Eastern Conference playoff picture when the season halted in March because of the COVID-19 outbreak, will get to play in postseason competition for the first time since 2016. Commissioner Gary Bettman announced the league’s plans Tuesday, just a few days after the NHL Players Association overwhelmingly voted to wrap up the current season with an expanded postseason field.
No dates have been determined yet, but Bettman said he hopes Phase 3 of the return-to-play plan — the start of training camps — will begin in July, which would put a start date in late July or early August. Bettman estimated the cost of the return-to-play venture at “10s of millions of dollars.”
“Obviously, we anticipate playing over the summer and into the early fall,” Bettman said in a video detailing the NHL’s return-to-play plan. “At this time, we are not fixing dates because the schedule of our return to play will be determined both by developing circumstances and the needs of the players.”
Florida (35-26-8) sat three points behind the Toronto Maple Leafs for the final guaranteed playoff spot in the Atlantic Division when the season ended, although the Panthers had played one fewer game. Florida also sat three points behind both the Carolina Hurricanes and Columbus Blue Jackets for the two Wild Card berths, with one fewer game played than the Blue Jackets and one more played than the Hurricanes. The New York Islanders and New York Rangers both sat ahead of the Panthers the Wild Card race, too.
Florida will meet the Islanders in the first round of the expanded 24-team postseason tournament. The Panthers and the other 11 East teams will all play at one site, while the 12 playoff teams from the Western Conference will play at a separate site. Teams will be limited to bringing 50 personnel to the sites, which will be named at a later date. Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Edmonton, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Vancouver, Las Vegas and Minneapolis-St. Paul in Minnesota are all under consideration. Bettman said choices will be narrowed down in the next three or four weeks.
Testing will ramp up once teams arrive in the host cities. Deputy commissioner Bill Daly said players will be tested every evening. Bettman said the league might need 25,000-30,000 tests. The NHL will shoulder the cost of tests in hub cities, but teams will pay for tests during training camps and other workouts. Rosters will also be expanded, although the exact number has yet to be determined.
“It’s expensive,” Daly said on a video conference, “but we think it’s really a foundational element of what we’re trying to accomplish.”
The top four teams in each conference will have a bye into the second round, while the bottom eight teams will compete in best-of-five qualifying-round series to fill out a more traditional eight-team conference bracket. In the new format, Florida is the No. 10 seed — based on points per game played and seeded without divisional concerns — and the Islanders are the No. 6 seed. The NHL has not yet determined whether the next two rounds — considered the first and second rounds — will be best-of-five or best-of-seven series, but the conference finals and Stanley Cup Finals will both be best-of-seven series. The league has not decided whether it will reseed after the qualifying round or simply stick with a bracket format.
Although only the Detroit Red Wings had been eliminated from playoff contention this season, the restart plan will exclude four other teams from the East and three from the West. Every team within 10 points of a playoff spot in the East will be included, as will every team within six points of a playoff spot in the West. Each conference’s postseason will include two teams which didn’t control their own destiny at the time play was suspended.
“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,” Bettman said, “and this plan will produce a worthy Stanley Cup champion, who will have run the postseason gauntlet that is unique to the NHL.”
The NHL is the first major sports league to formally announce a return-to-play plan amid the coronavirus pandemic. On Monday, the league announced it is ready to start moving into Phase 2 of its restart plan, which would allow teams to reconvene at team facilities for small, voluntary group workouts of up to six players. While it didn’t put a specific target date in a memo circulated to teams, the NHL is aiming for early June to begin Phase 2.
What about the draft?
The expanded playoff format doesn’t mean there are only seven teams in the NHL Entry Draft lottery. Florida still has a chance at snagging a top pick in the 2020 NHL Draft if it doesn’t get past the qualifying round.
This year, the lottery will potentially be conducted two phases with 15 teams ultimately making up the lottery. The first phase will happen in June before play resumes with the three draws taking place to determine the top three picks. The seven teams whose seasons are done will be joined by eight placeholder slots, representing the eight teams who will eventually be knocked out in the qualifying round.
If the three draws are all won by the bottom seven teams, there will be no second phase. If one of the eight placeholders wins any of the three draws, the pick will be awarded in the second phase of the lottery, which will happen after the qualifying round. The rest of the top-15 picks will be determined by points percentage at the time of the league’s pause in March.
This story was originally published May 26, 2020 at 4:41 PM.
