The NHL will now move on to a 24-team conference-based postseason format that was approved by the NHLPA last Friday by a 29-2 vote, with the Carolina Hurricanes and Tampa Bay Lightning the only teams whose representatives voted against it.
The games would be held inside empty arenas at two hub cities, where players, staff and others would be housed during the season restart. Originally, the NHL was seeking four different hubs, but logistics and a refocusing on the 24-team conference format narrowed that to two.
Bettman said Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Edmonton, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Toronto and Vancouver are being considered. The hubs would have secure arenas, hotels and practice facilities, and there would be aggressive COVID-19 testing and protocols at each site.
The top four teams in each conference ranked by points percentage -- Boston, Tampa Bay, Washington and Philadelphia in the East and St. Louis, Colorado, Vegas and Dallas in the West -- will play separate round-robin tournaments to determine seeding in the first round. They will be played with regular-season overtime and shootout rules.
Those teams will be accumulating points within that round-robin, and if there are any ties, they will be broken by which team has a higher regular-season points percentage. As an example: If the Bruins and Lightning both go 2-1 in the round-robin, Boston would earn the top seed based on points percentage.
The remaining 16 teams, seeded by conference, will play best-of-five play-in series. These games will be played with playoff overtime rules, and these play-in series will determine which teams advance to a traditional 16-team Stanley Cup playoff bracket.
In the East, the play-in series matchups would be No. 5 Pittsburgh vs. No. 12 Montreal, No. 6 Carolina vs. No. 11 New York Rangers, No. 7 New York Islanders vs. No. 10 Florida, and No. 8 Toronto vs. No. 9 Columbus. In the West, it would be No. 5 Edmonton vs. No. 12 Chicago, No. 6 Nashville vs. No. 11 Arizona, No. 7 Vancouver vs. No. 10 Minnesota, and No. 8 Calgary vs. No. 9 Winnipeg.
