In the Eastern Conference, the two teams with the fewest points (98), the Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers, will, naturally, play one another. The Carolina Hurricanes, with the second-most points in the league, will get the Ottawa Senators. The Sens are one of the hottest teams in the NHL and one that posted more points (and 11 more regulation wins) than the Flyers.<\/p>\n As I said, a little confusing, but let\u2019s keep going. I\u2019m sure it\u2019ll come together.<\/p>\n The other two matchups in the East consist of the 109-point Buffalo Sabres taking on the 100-point Boston Bruins, and the Tampa Bay Lightning and Montreal Canadiens, who both finished with 106 points, facing each other. With only eight NHL teams reaching the century mark this season, it\u2019s rather curious that six of the league\u2019s best eight teams (and eight of the best nine if we include the 99-point Senators) are up against one another in Round 1.<\/p>\n Over in the Western Conference, things are a bit more rewarding for at least one of the top teams. The first-place Colorado Avalanche, for example, gets the easiest opponent in the Los Angeles Kings, who finished in 20th, behind four teams that missed the playoffs altogether.<\/p>\n The Vegas Golden Knights won the Pacific Division with 95 points, which would have missed the playoffs in the East, but it is still good for the 13th-best record in the NHL. Naturally, they\u2019ll have an evenly matched opponent in the 92-point Utah Mammoth, who crossed over from the Central as a wild-card club.<\/p>\n The other Pacific series will see the 14th-place Edmonton Oilers meet the 18th-place Ducks in another battle of teams with similar point totals. In the Central, however, it\u2019s the 112-point Dallas Stars \u2014 the third-best team in the NHL \u2014 that landed the 104-point Minnesota Wild, who sit seventh.<\/p>\n If that all sounds strange, that\u2019s because it is. This was a unique year in the NHL standings, with one very weak division (the Pacific) and a heavy imbalance between the conferences (the East being far deeper than the West, with 12 of 16 teams hitting 91-plus points).<\/p>\n That imbalance was so pronounced that some Western teams were still in the running to both make the playoffs and get a top-five draft pick going into the final week of the season.<\/p>\n What makes an outlier year like this really stand out, though, is the NHL\u2019s playoff format<\/a>. Introduced for the 2013-14 season, it is set up to accomplish three different things:<\/p>\n 1) Encourage division-heavy play and rivalry matchups On paper, that all makes sense, and it has resulted in the NHL\u2019s opening round being one of the best in pro sports. The downside, however, is that it has at times come at the expense of the later rounds, with the conference finals, in particular, frequently ending in four- or five-game series in recent years.<\/p>\n It has also created some matchup fatigue, with the Oilers and Kings, for example, meeting in the first round in each of the last four years (and nearly again this season) in the Pacific. The Lightning and Florida Panthers have clashed in four of the past five postseasons in the Atlantic Division.<\/p>\n The biggest drawback, however, is that teams in powerhouse divisions get unduly punished. The Central this year is the perfect example, with the Avs, Stars and Wild all Stanley Cup contenders with top-seven records. Under the NHL playoff format, however, one of them will be eliminated in the first round, and only one of them can make it to the Western Conference final.<\/p>\n After 12 years of grumbles from various corners, the system is getting more pushback than ever this year.<\/p>\n \u201cWe talk about it a lot,\u201d Wild general manager Bill Guerin told TSN<\/a> earlier this season. \u201cPersonally, I would like to see it change, but I understand why we don\u2019t. It goes year to year. I think this year is just really unique in that you have these three really strong teams all in one division. You don\u2019t see that a ton.\u201d<\/p>\n The one format that many executives, players, media and fans point to as a potential solution is a 1-versus-8 conference-based playoff alignment. That\u2019s closer to how the NBA works. In basketball, teams that win their division can miss the playoffs altogether, and seedings are based entirely on overall conference records, which is basically the opposite of hockey.<\/p>\n The NHL did use a conference-based playoff format from the 1993-94 season through the 2012-13 season, which is why some are nostalgic to return to it.<\/p>\n If this year\u2019s NHL playoffs were based on a similar format (without the NBA\u2019s play-in system), the matchups would look like so:<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/nhlbracket-scaled.jpg\")
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2) Reduce travel and associated costs
3) Allow for the creation of a \u201cclean\u201d bracket<\/a> where there is no reseeding<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Altbracket-scaled.jpg\")
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