How the NHL Playoff Format Actually Works (And Why It's Controversial)

Every spring, sixteen teams begin the chase for the Stanley Cup. Every spring, somebody – a fan, a player, sometimes a coach – points out that the path to get there doesn't quite make sense.

The NHL's playoff format is one of the most distinctive in major North American sports. It's also one of the most criticized. Here's how it actually works, why the league set it up this way, and why the arguments to change it keep getting louder.

The Format, in Plain English

Sixteen teams qualify for the playoffs: eight from the Eastern Conference, eight from the Western Conference. Within each conference, the top three finishers in each division automatically clinch a spot. That accounts for twelve of the sixteen.

The remaining four teams come in as wild cards – two per conference, awarded to whichever non-qualifying teams have the most regular-season points, regardless of which division they finished in.

First-round matchups are then set by a fixed formula:

• The division winner with the better record in the conference plays the lower-ranked wild card.
• The other division winner plays the higher-ranked wild card.
• The second- and third-place teams in each division play each other.

Each round is a best-of-seven, played in a 2-2-1-1-1 format – higher seed hosts Games 1, 2, 5, and 7; lower seed hosts Games 3, 4, and 6.

The most important detail, and the one most casual fans miss: the bracket is fixed. Once it's set, teams are not reseeded between rounds. If a wild card knocks off a 1-seed in Round 1, that wild card simply slides into the next slot on the bracket. There's no rebalancing to ensure the best surviving team plays the worst.

A Quick History Lesson

It wasn't always this way. From 1994 through 2013, the NHL used a 1-through-8 conference seeding format. The top eight teams in each conference qualified, were seeded by points, and were reseeded after every round so the highest remaining seed always played the lowest. It was clean, meritocratic, and easy to follow.

The current system arrived in 2013-14, alongside the league's realignment into four divisions. The stated goal: protect divisional rivalries early in the playoffs. The league wanted Pittsburgh-Philadelphia, Toronto-Montreal, and Edmonton-Calgary to meet in the first round when they qualified, not get separated into different brackets by impartial seeding.

For some matchups, this has worked exactly as intended. The Kings and Oilers, for instance, have now met in the first round in each of the last four seasons – a rivalry the format manufactured and then deepened.

Why the Format Gets Criticized

The complaints fall into three buckets, and all three come from the same root cause: the format prioritizes geography over performance.

1. It punishes good teams in tough divisions. Look at the 2026 first round. The Minnesota Wild finished the regular season with 104 points – a total that would win some divisions outright. Because they finished third in the Central, they were locked into a Round 1 series with the Stars, and a likely Round 2 date with the Presidents' Trophy-winning Avalanche. A team that earned a top-six conference record was effectively treated like a six-seed.

2. It rewards mediocre teams in soft divisions. The flip side is uglier. In a year where the Pacific Division collectively underperformed, the Anaheim Ducks made the playoffs as a 3-seed despite having a record that would have left them outside the bubble in the Eastern Conference. Connor McDavid called the Pacific race a "pillow fight" – and the format's response was to hand a Pacific bottom-feeder the same bracket position as a 100-plus-point Atlantic team.

3. It can produce nonsense first-round matchups. This year's Penguins-Flyers series is the clearest example. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia were the two worst teams to qualify in the East. Under a 1-8 conference format, they'd be the seven and eight seeds – and would not play each other in Round 1; they'd each be matched with one of the conference's top two seeds. Under the divisional bracket, they're stuck playing each other because they finished second and third in the Metropolitan. One bad team is guaranteed to advance. One good team is guaranteed to face a fresher opponent in Round 2.

The fixed bracket compounds all of this. Even when an upset occurs, there's no mechanism to rebalance. A wild card that wins Round 1 stays in their original bracket slot – meaning the team that benefits most from an upset is often whichever team happens to be next in line, not the team that earned its way there with regular-season excellence.

What's the Alternative?

Most reform proposals fall into two camps:

The 1-8 conference reseeding model is the popular one. It's what the NHL used to do, and it's what the NBA does now. Division winners are guaranteed playoff spots but not top-two seeds. Every other team is seeded strictly by points. After each round, the bracket is re-sorted so the highest seed plays the lowest. Travel stays manageable, divisional rivalries can still emerge, but a 104-point team isn't punished for finishing behind a 110-point team.

The 1-16 league-wide model is more radical: scrap conferences entirely, seed by points across the whole league. The fairest possible system. Also a logistical nightmare – Florida-Vancouver in Round 1 means cross-continental travel, brutal time-zone scheduling, and a network broadcast schedule that nobody wants to assemble.

There's a real tradeoff at the heart of this debate, and it's worth taking seriously. The current format does produce more first-round drama and louder rivalries than a strictly merit-based bracket would. Buffalo-Boston, Pittsburgh-Philadelphia, Toronto-Montreal – these are series that move the needle. They sell tickets. They get fans yelling at televisions in bars. The 2014 reform wasn't introduced for no reason.

But the cost has become harder to defend with each passing year. When the format produces matchups where the two worst playoff teams play each other in Round 1 while a top-five conference team gets a brutal second-round draw, it stops being a rivalry-protection mechanism and starts looking like a structural flaw.

The Bottom Line

The NHL's playoff format is a deliberate trade-off: rivalries and bracket simplicity in exchange for competitive fairness. For about a decade, that trade has been defensible. In 2026, with the Wild stuck on the wrong side of the bracket and a Penguins-Flyers Round 1 between the conference's two weakest playoff teams, it's getting harder to argue the math still works.

The format isn't going anywhere this year, or probably the next. But the case for change is no longer a fringe argument. It's the consensus among most fans and analysts who watch closely. At some point, the league will have to decide whether divisional rivalries are worth this much. Per an interview on May 7th on the Pat McAfee show, Gary Bettman shared the existing playoff structure is "working well" and the NHL "doesn't see the need for a change."