I’ll start this by saying something important: I’m still relatively new to hockey.

I didn’t grow up around the NHL the way I did baseball or football, and I’m still pretty green when it comes to some of the deeper rules and traditions of the sport. But over the last couple of years, I’ve absolutely fallen in love with hockey. The speed, the atmosphere, the intensity, the physicality — there’s really nothing else like it in sports.

Because of that growing love for the game, I also want to begin writing more hockey content and helping make Empire Sports Talk a more well-rounded sports site overall. That said, as I’ve started learning the NHL more deeply, there’s one thing I keep circling back to:

The playoff format is unnecessarily confusing.

The NHL Playoff Format Explained

For casual sports fans, especially basketball fans, it’s easy to assume the NHL playoff structure works similarly to the NBA’s. The leagues run almost side-by-side on the calendar.
They both have: Eastern and Western conferences, divisions within those conferences, and 82-game regular seasons. So, naturally, many people assume the postseason setup is basically identical.

It’s not…and that’s a good thing.

The NBA has reached a point where more than half the league qualifies for “the postseason” if you include the Play-In Tournament. At a certain point, that starts to feel like it completely undermines the idea that the playoffs are supposed to represent the best teams.

Currently, the NHL playoff field works like this:

• The top 3 teams in each division automatically qualify
• Then the next 2 best teams in each conference qualify as Wild Cards

That creates:

• 8 playoff teams per conference
• 16 total playoff teams

Simple enough. Then the actual bracket gets messy.

Where The NHL Format Gets Confusing

The NHL does not simply seed teams 1-through-8 by conference.

Instead:

• Division winners play Wild Card teams
• The 2nd and 3rd place teams in each division are automatically paired against each other in Round 1

This is done largely to preserve division rivalries. And to be fair, it absolutely creates drama.

– Toronto Maple Leafs vs Boston Bruins.
– Edmonton Oilers vs Los Angeles Kings.
– New York Rangers vs New Jersey Devils.

These series are brutal, emotional, physical wars. Professional sports everywhere are better when the bitterest of rivals meet on the biggest stages. Who doesn’t want to see the Red Sox and Yankees square off in October? A Lakers-Celtics Finals matchup is what the NBA dreams about. But the problem is that the system often punishes great teams simply because they play in strong divisions.

Imagine this:

Team	Points
Florida Panthers	112
Toronto Maple Leafs	110
Tampa Bay Lightning	108

Under the current format, Florida gets a Wild Card opponent, while Toronto and Tampa Bay immediately eliminate one another in Round 1. That means two legitimate Stanley Cup contenders collide before the playoffs even really get going. Meanwhile, weaker divisions can sometimes create easier playoff paths.

That’s where the frustration comes in for many fans.

The NHL Actually Mirrors The NFL More Than The NBA

Ironically, despite sharing a calendar with the NBA, the NHL actually resembles the NFL much more closely philosophically.

The NFL:

• Rewards division winners
• Uses Wild Cards
• Makes division races matter

That’s a good thing.

One major issue with the NBA is that division championships have become virtually meaningless. The league operates almost entirely by conference standings, to the point where many casual fans couldn’t even tell you what division their favorite team plays in.

That’s not the case in the NFL, and it’s not the case in MLB either. Winning your division means something in those sports. The NHL is trying to preserve that importance, and I actually respect that idea. I just think the execution could be cleaner.

My Proposed Fix: Lean Further Into The NFL Model

Here’s the solution I’d propose: the NHL should fully embrace the NFL-style structure.

Make The Playoff Field:

• Each division winner
• Plus two Wild Card teams per conference

That’s it.

Then seed teams by overall conference record.

This would:

• Reward division winners properly
• Preserve meaningful division races
• Avoid elite teams knocking each other out immediately

The bracket becomes:

• 1 vs 8
• 2 vs 7
• 3 vs 6
• 4 vs 5

Simple. Clean. Easy to understand. And most importantly, it rewards the regular season beyond just handing out a Presidents’ Trophy to the team with the best record.

Right now, the NHL sometimes feels like it accidentally creates “Conference Finals” matchups in Round 1 simply because of geography. That doesn’t feel fair over an 82-game season.

Rivalries Would Still Exist

And before people argue: “But rivalries are what make hockey special!”

I agree completely, but those rivalries would still happen naturally. If Toronto and Boston are both elite teams, odds are they’ll still run into each other eventually.

The difference is: it happens later, it feels earned, and it creates even bigger moments.

Imagine Leafs-Bruins in an Eastern Conference Final instead of Round 1 every other year. That’s bigger hockey. Not smaller. Going back to the Red Sox-Yankees or Celtics-Lakers examples, the bigger the stage, the better the action.

Final Thoughts

Again, I’m still learning hockey. I’m not pretending to be some lifelong NHL expert dissecting systems from 1986. But sometimes newer fans notice things older fans have simply accepted.

From my perspective, simplifying the playoff structure and rewarding division winners in a cleaner, more NFL or MLB-style format could make the Stanley Cup Playoffs even better than they already are.