New York Rangers: A playoff scenario for the NHL

The NHL is shut down as the coronavirus pandemic grips the entire world.  No place is harder hit than the New York City area so writing about the New York Rangers seems rather trivial at this point in time.  But I write this article in the hope that it can provide some sort of distraction, an alternate conversation for hockey fans as we await the return of some sense of normalcy.

The season ended so abruptly. One day we are tracking the playoff picture and where the New York Rangers stand after every night clicked off the NHL schedule, then in a flash it all became so meaningless. The joy of watching Artemi Panarin, the wonder of watching Mika Zibanejad morph into one of the NHLs most dominant centers, all suddenly halted.  Suddenly.

The playoff chase was exactly what this Rangers team needed. The youngest team in the league competing in meaningful games during the last few weeks of the season.  These weeks were going to bring valuable NHL experience, these weeks were going to make next season as highly anticipated as any a Rangers fan can remember.  Making the playoffs this season would be a gift like no other, but the journey as they say is so much more important than the destination.

So what if the journey was to continue in some fashion? Let’s say for the sake of this article that the world stops spinning out of control by the end of April (or even May) and the call goes out to bring America back as quickly as possible.  We all know sports are a vital part of any social recovery.  How can the NHL go about finishing the 2019-20 season and awarding a Stanley Cup to a worthy champion.

We would need two months.

A Playoff Scenario

Wholesale changes would need to be made in order to accomplish this proposal.  There will be scheduling issues and many other logistical issues as well, but here is what can be done.

Each team would pick up play where it left off in the regular season.

The goal would be a highly compressed schedule to get each team to 75 total games. From May 1, until May 10, teams would to finish up the regular season. For some teams that means five more games for others as many as seven, after that, the playoff tournament would start.

The bottom four teams in each conference would be eliminated.  So if we looked at the current standings in the Eastern Conference, Detroit, Ottawa, New Jersey and Buffalo would be eliminated.

Who’s in?

The remaining 12 teams make the playoffs.  The top two seeds in each division get a preliminary round bye.  So Boston, Tampa, Washington and Philly sit out the preliminary round.

Here’s where it gets interesting, the preliminary round. The remaining eight teams are seeded 1-8 and play a home and home two game series that emulates the format used by the Champions League soccer tournament.  Now I realize that many NHL fans are not familiar with European soccer, it’s certainly not for everyone, but trust me, the Champions League can be riveting television because of the tournament format.

Here’s how it works. Two teams are paired against each other and then they play a home and home series to determine who advances in the tournament. Score is cumulative with the tie breaker being most away goals.

So let’s say the Rangers get the eight seed in the first round.  They play the one seed.  Let’s go with Pittsburgh as the number one. The first game of the home and home is at MSG.  The final score of that game is 2-2. Two nights later the teams meet in Pittsburgh in what essentially is a winner take all game.

Changing the score of the first game, lets say the Penguins win 3-1. In the next game, the Rangers win 2-1.  The Penguins win the series with a cumulative score of 4-3. If the Rangers win the second game 4-2 then the Rangers would advance because they scored more away goals (4) than the Penguins (3).

Now if there is no decisive away goal differential, say both games ended in ties, then you would go to a full overtime session to decide the winner of the series.  If you want to make it really crazy, make the overtime 3 on 3.

It’s not really all that complicated, and think about the incredible hockey you would get.  Away teams would go full-out trying to get valuable away goals. The second game of the home and home would be like game seven for each series. Teams that are down goals after the first game would really have to open it up in-game two.  It would be like 60 minutes of barn burner hockey. It would be incredible.

The final five to seven games of the regular season would have real meaning as teams would want to be the home team for the back-end of the preliminary round.  Knowing what you have to do to win on home ice is a real advantage.

This qualifying round would run May 11 – May 12.

The rest of the playoffs

Round 1 of the playoffs would run from May 14 – May 24.  All the teams would be re-seeded and the format would then jump into the regular Stanley Cup playoff format for the duration of the playoffs.

Conference Semifinals would run May 25 – June 6. Conference Finals, June 7 – June 18. The Stanley Cup finals would start on June 20 and end no later than July 1.  Yes some back to back games may be necessary, but a short series wouldn’t leave a team idle to for too long either.

If this is deemed to be just too much hockey for the players in a compressed amount of time, you could make the first round of the playoffs a five game series.

What this proposal really does accomplish is that it allows every team that had a legitimate shot to make the playoffs when the season was cancelled a chance to compete. It also does not keep the top teams sitting idle for too long while other teams get to play meaningful games.

This proposal also eliminates the real danger that the bottom dwelling teams will return to play but have no real incentive to do so and thus will fold like a cheap suit as they finish out the regular season.  The teams that play them may collect easy points in the standings, but they still have to face the cauldron of the preliminary round to advance to the big tournament.

I toyed with the idea of giving the top seeds in the first round five home games in the seven game series as an incentive for the top teams to play hard to finish out the season but decided it would just be too unfair.

There you have it Rangers fans, the reality is this team is not quite ready to compete at the highest level, but this playoff proposal would allow them to get some very valuable experience that could serve them well as they continue to grow.  It would give the NHL a legitimate way to award a worthy champion, and it would be entertaining as hell for all hockey fans.