NHL's divisional playoff format stinks – and it's time to move on

The NHL may have an entertainment problem on its hands right now.

No, it’s not because of the inconsistent officiating seen in the playoffs year after year. It’s not because said inconsistent officiating encourages cheap shots and little disruptions. No, it’s not even because of five-minute video reviews over marginal details.

It’s because of the series mismatches we’ve been witnessing in the later rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

It feels like far too often now, the playoffs unfold as such. The first round features several exciting matchups between teams that have already played multiple times that season. The second round sometimes features the best of those divisions but also acts as a course correction from any upsets that occurred in the first round. The third round then acts as a reminder of which division was the better of the two. And then comes the Stanley Cup Final, which usually ends up being a battle between two of the better teams in the league (although 2021 showed us that that isn’t always the case).

Just look at this year’s playoffs so far. The first round gave use a few exciting series, highlighted by two fantastic Game 7s between the Dallas Stars and Colorado Avalanche and the Winnipeg Jets and St. Louis Blues. But then the second round featured three series that saw a team go up 3-1 in their respective series, with all three closing them out by Game 6.

And now in the Conference Finals, it feels even more one-sided. The Florida Panthers took a 3-0 series lead in the East, and while the Carolina Hurricanes started a comeback with a 3-0 win in Game 4, it feels inevitable that Florida will advance. In the West, the Edmonton Oilers now hold a 3-1 series lead, and outside of the third period of Game 1 in which they allowed five goals, they’ve outscored the Stars 16-3.

Both series feel very lopsided, and it’s a clear representation of the disparity between the two divisions in each conference, especially in the Eastern Conference. The Hurricanes are the best representative the Metropolitan Division has, and yet it feels like any of the Florida Panthers, Toronto Maple Leafs or Tampa Bay Lightning could win against them with ease right now. There’s a bit more of a contest in the West, but with how the Oilers are playing right now, you have to wonder how the Vegas Golden Knights and Los Angeles Kings may have done against the Stars as well.

This isn’t the only recent example either. 2024 did see slightly closer Conference Finals matchups, but after the Stars and Rangers went up 2-1, the Oilers and Panthers took over those series. 2023 was even worse, with both series seeing the Panthers and Golden Knights go up 3-0 (not to mention that the Cup Final wasn’t close either). Even in 2022, the Avalanche swept the Oilers quite easily. They’ve all had their moments, but you really have to think to remember the last time the Conference Finals has given us a classic series to remember.

So as the entertainment product this late in the season dwindles, as does the viewership (particularly in the United States), why does the NHL choose to not make a change to the playoff format?

When the NHL first announced the realignment and the switch to a divisional playoff format for the 2013-14 season, commissioner Gary Bettman had plenty of reasons why he liked the decision. It would create rivalries out of consistent matchups. More regional matchups early on would benefit the teams. And let’s be real, the NHL saw the success of the bracket challenge with March Madness and wanted to replicate that with a more set format. (They did have it before the realignment, but reseeding meant that one wrong first-round series pick would result in your second-round predictions ruined.)

And in the league’s defense, he wasn’t wrong out of the gate. Some teams faced off consistently over the next few years, highlighted by the three-year showdown between Sidney Crosby’s Pittsburgh Penguins and Alex Ovechkin’s Washington Capitals from 2016 to 2018. It created benchmarks for the other teams in the division and conference, knowing who they were going to likely face at certain points in the playoffs.

On top of that, the Conference Finals for the first few seasons were also quite good. 2014 saw what was basically a second Stanley Cup Final between the Kings and Blackhawks in the West, while the East saw the underdog story of Dustin Tokarski trying to lift the Canadiens over the Rangers in the wake of Carey Price’s injury. 2015 delivered two great seven-game series between the Rangers and Lightning and the Ducks and Blackhawks. Even 2016 and 2018 gave us the tail end of the Penguins’ and Capitals’ contention windows taking on the dawn of the Lightning’s.

But since then, the product feels a bit weakened come the third round, and a lot of that is due to the disparity of the divisions. The West has traded representatives between the two divisions (albeit quite pronouncedly in a good chunk of the Conference Finals series), but the East will likely have its conference represented by the Atlantic Division for the seventh straight season. Heck, even the one year where crossover was possible in the temporary 2020-21 divisions, two traditional Atlantic teams met in the Final in the Lightning and Canadiens.

On top of that, the consistent matchups haven’t created rivalries to the extent that the NHL was hoping for. Sure, a series between the Bruins and Leafs gets heated, but it’s still been very one-sided in terms of the result. Los Angeles has never really felt like a threat to McDavid and Draisaitl’s dominance in its annual meeting with the Oilers. Even the Battle of Florida has only gone past five games once since in the four meetings we’ve had in the past five seasons.

It’s never been clearer that the divisional playoff format needs to go, especially after what we’ve seen this season. A quick dive into what the traditional 1-8 format would have looked like, and it’s possible the later rounds would have been more entertaining.

In the West, Winnipeg (1) vs. St. Louis (8) and Vegas (2) vs. Minnesota (7) remain the same, but we’d get a switch-up of the other two, including our current West Final in Dallas (3) vs. Edmonton (6), as well as a slight breath of fresh air in Los Angeles (4) vs. Colorado (5). Sure, the Kings would have to deal with a two-headed monster in Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar, but they'd take anything new over Edmonton at this point.

Assuming the series we have seen go as they already have or will go, we’d get a Canadian matchup between Winnipeg (1) and Edmonton (6) (not to mention the best player in the world against the best goalie), while Vegas (2) would get one of Los Angeles (4) or Colorado (5). Sure, we still get some similar matchups out of this, but even just seeing them at different stages of the playoffs feels refreshing.

In the East, the difference in quality is a bit more staggering. The first round would still feature Washington (1) vs. Montreal (8), but then Toronto (2) vs. New Jersey (7), Tampa Bay (3) vs. Ottawa (6) and our current East Final matchup, Carolina (4) vs. Florida (5). Based on what we’re seeing from the latter series, this would have been a more fitting first-round matchup, no?

Once again, let’s assume no upsets happen and Toronto and Tampa would have come out favorably in their series, while Washington and Florida see theirs unfold the way they did/will. Now the second round features Washington (1) vs. Florida (5) and Toronto (2) vs. Tampa Bay (3). Florida probably still ends up in the East Final, but now we get a likely excellent series between Toronto and Tampa, and regardless of the result there, it would make for a much more interesting result against Florida than Carolina has.

The switch from divisional to conference playoff matchups won’t be a changeup 100% of the time either. 2024’s first round in the East would have been the exact same, with the only difference being that the Rangers and Bruins, and Hurricanes and Panthers would have been second-round opponents.

What it does do is make the matchups feel more organic and related to the teams’ performances in the regular season and not based on which divisions they’re in. If a potential Conference Final happens in the second round because another team finished with a higher seed than both of those teams, then that’s on them for not performing better in the regular season. But if they’re doomed to face in the second round regardless of whether they finish top two in the conference, it doesn’t feel nearly as significant.

For some reason, Bettman and the league continue to think that the divisional playoffs work. As recently as the 2025 GM meetings, Bettman has denounced the idea of changing the format, citing that it creates exciting first-round matchups and that the best teams have to play the best teams eventually, so why not in the first round.

But again, that’s ignoring the fact that these matchups happened sometimes anyways in the original format. Doesn’t anyone remember when a stacked Atlantic Division in 2012 resulted in a first round matchup between two potential Cup contenders in the Philadelphia Flyers and Pittsburgh Penguins facing off in the first round? And yet, the fact that that wasn’t a guarantee made that series all the more exciting.

The fan outcry for this format has been quite consistent over the years, whether it’s Leafs fans annoyed that with finishing in the top five and yet facing another top-five team in the first round, Kings fans sick of playing the Oilers every year or even hockey fans in general getting annoyed with the Hurricanes or Rangers dominating their own division just to barely stand a chance against whatever team the Atlantic spits out.

But that outcry feels even stronger in the past few seasons, and it’s clear a change needs to be made. The NHL is trying its hardest to force exciting matchups when all that does is lose the magic of those matchups, and as recent seasons have shown us, it only spoils the product as the playoffs continue.