The Case for the 70-game NHL Season

I have a suggestion for how to format the playoffs in the COVID-19 Pandemic season. It isn’t gimmicky, it’s fair, and it can be done in two nights prior to the start of a standard 16-team playoffs. This means nobody can complain, and there should be no asterisk beside the cup winner.

It starts with a fairly simple premise: the 70-game regular season.

Basically, the first thing you do is wipe out the 71st game for any teams who have played one, rolling back that 71st game as if it never happened. This affects only four teams:

• St. Louis (Reg. WIN)
• Vegas (OT WIN)
• Edmonton (Reg. LOSS)
• Winnipeg (Reg. WIN)

For the three teams that won their 71st game, simply subtract two points from the standings. Edmonton would see no change in the standings. Moving to 70 games and wiping out any records for any 71st game played eliminates most of the current non-playoff or bubble teams.

Eastern Conference

Here is what we’re left with in the East:

Team	GP	PTS
Boston	70	100
Tampa Bay	70	92
Toronto	70	81
Washington	69	90
Philadelphia	69	89
Pittsburgh	69	86
Carolina	68	81
Columbus	70	81
NY Islanders	68	80

Based on the current standings, the seedings of BOS, TBL and TOR are all fixed, as there are no Atlantic division teams remaining.

You aren’t messing with any gimmick formats like the 24-team format that has been floating around that only aims to appease bubble teams…

To determine the Metro division champions, WSH should play PHI one game to get to 70 each. There is no need for PIT to play their 70th game as their seeding is fixed.

As for the Eastern Conference wildcard, you can simply play CAR vs NYI on back-to-back nights to determine which of the three eligible teams will occupy the two wildcard spots, using standard tie-breakers if necessary.

Western Conference

Here is what we have in the West, which is a bit more difficult:

Team	GP	PTS
St. Louis	70	92
Colorado	70	92
Dallas	69	82
Vegas	70	84
Edmonton	70	83
Calgary	70	79
Winnipeg	70	78
Vancouver	69	78
Nashville	69	78
Minnesota	69	77

In the Central Division, the seedings are fixed as they are, however Dallas only has 69 games played – we’ll get to that in a moment.

In the Pacific, Vegas and Edmonton are both secure but Calgary is not. The solution here is pretty simple: have all four teams with 69 GP play one more game against each other. To figure out who was going to play who, just look at what was supposed to be the upcoming schedule.

• Nashville and Minnesota were scheduled to play on March 15
• Dallas and Vancouver were scheduled to play on March 30th

So, the last game played for these four teams would be: DAL vs VAN, and NSH vs MIN.

Once you’re at 70 games played for the remaining 19 teams (minus Pittsburgh who have no reason to play their 70th game), you simply seed as normal.

This entire plan could end up happening in the span of two nights, which is significantly shorter than the idea of a play-in best-of-5 series and certainly a lot shorter than the only other way of having a completely fair resolution, which is playing out the rest of the regular season.

Final thoughts

In my opinion, this is by far the simplest, fairest way to establish the seedings for a standard 16-team playoff format. You aren’t messing with any gimmick formats like the 24-team format that has been floating around that only aims to appease bubble teams and allows teams that have no business being in the playoffs (Montreal, Chicago, etc.) a chance they don’t deserve.

It also just might avoid that pesky asterisk that could end up figuratively engraved onto the Stanley Cup.