‘If the season ended today’ — how it would look if NHL’s resumption is the playoffs

“If the season ended today…” is an overused expression in the sports world that has become beyond cliché and is typically an exercise in futility.

It just so happens, though, that these unprecedented times offer — for perhaps the first time in league history — relevance to discussions about what the NHL’s playoff picture would look like if the regular season ended today. That’s because it very well might have, indeed, ended after the games did on Wednesday.

With the NHL on “pause” as the world at large grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, myriad questions remain unanswered in what is the comparatively unimportant world of sports. No one knows when — or even if — the 2019-20 season will resume.

And if it does, will there be any resumption to the regular season? With its original schedule ending April 4 and a certain need for a “ramping-up” period to get players and teams back into shape, it seems almost unthinkable at this juncture that NHL game play could resume in time for any games to be played on their originally-scheduled dates.

It has been reported that the NHL asked its teams to look into arena availability well into July, and that suggests the league is keeping open the option of rescheduling missed games first prior to starting the playoffs in, say, May (or beyond).

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— Mark Madden (@MarkMaddenX) March 13, 2020

Still, because the Stanley Cup playoffs are by far the NHL’s highest-profile (and most lucrative) period of the year, a scenario in which the league re-starts by immediately jumping into its postseason isn’t a farfetched one. It might, in fact, be the most likely scenario — if, god-willing, this season resumes at all.

While it should be stressed that there are no formal plans for such, let’s take a look at how the Stanley Cup playoffs could look if/when they start weeks or months from now (after it would be at all practical to consider playing more regular-season games).

Kevin Gorman: Shutdown of the sports world showed us that leaders are not to be trusted

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— Kevin Gorman (@KGorman_Trib) March 13, 2020

For this exercise, since it’s a hypothetical, points percentage (rather than points) will be used for the simple reason that teams have played differing numbers of games (between 68 and 71 of their scheduled 82).

Also, in an effort to appease teams that were on the playoff bubble and would lament not being given the chance to make up ground, we’ll qualify 10 teams (instead of the usual eight) for the postseason from each conference. This will keep a format with the top three from each division clinching playoff berths while the top four in the wild-card standings will meet, for the sake of argument, in a pair of best-of-three “qualifying round” series in each conference.

That concept is inspired by a similar precedent (albeit one for a drastically different reason): the 1982 NFL season that was shortened from 16 to nine regular-season games because of a 57-day players’ strike. The NFL took eight teams from each conference into the playoffs instead of the originally-intended five.

Without further ado, the NHL playoffs — all together now — if the season ended today.

EASTERN CONFERENCE

Wild-Card (Preliminary) Round

(7) Carolina Hurricanes (1.191 ppg) vs. (10) Florida Panthers (1.130 ppg)

(8) New York Islanders (1.176 ppg) vs. (9) Columbus Blue Jackets (1.157 ppg)

First round

(Atlantic-1) Boston Bruins (1.429 ppg) vs. Lower-seeded wild-card round winner

(Atlantic-2) Tampa Bay Lightning (1.314 ppg) vs. (Atlantic-3) Toronto Maple Leafs (1.157 ppg)

(Metropolitan-1) Washington Capitals (1.304 ppg) vs. Higher-seeded wild-card round winner

(Metropolitan-2) Philadelphia Flyers (1.290 ppg) vs. (Metropolitan-3) Pittsburgh Penguins (1.246 ppg)

WESTERN CONFERENCE

Wild-Card (Preliminary) Round

(7) Nashville Predators (1.130 ppg) vs. (10) Minnesota Wild (1.116 ppg)

(8) Calgary Flames (1.129 ppg) vs. (9) Winnipeg Jets (1.127 ppg)

First round

(Central-1) St. Louis Blues (1.324 ppg) vs. Lower-seeded wild-card round winner

(Central-2) Colorado Avalanche (1.314 ppg) vs. (Central-3) Dallas Stars (1.188 ppg)

(Pacific-1) Vegas Golden Knights (1.211 ppg) vs. Higher-seeded wild-card round winner

(Pacific-2) Edmonton Oilers (1.169 ppg) vs. (Pacific-3) Vancouver Canucks (1.130 ppg)

Keep up with the Pittsburgh Penguins all season long.