NHL Provisional 2021 Season Format
By: Alderwan Putra Wicaksono
Tags: Ice Hockey, Hockey, NHL, Analysis, Opinion

NHL Provisional 2021 Season Format

Cr: NHL

It’s been three months with no actions on the ice after the season ended in September with the Tampa Bay Lightning lifting the Stanley Cup after a 4–2 series victory against the Dallas Stars. There are still uncertain answers about when the new 2020–21 season will begin. The COVID-19 pandemic is not over yet and it becomes the reason for all of this confusion, especially for the league and the constraints to return to normalcy for the upcoming 2021–22 season.

About a month after the finale in Edmonton hub, the NHL commissioner Gary Bettman made a statement to make the 2020–21 regular season be fully played in 82 games and continue with a normal playoffs format. But he expected that the plan could proceed if the league starts in December, with possibilities that the Winter Classic Games and All-Stars Game won’t be played. That plan was said in mind of the financial reasons of teams are facing due to the season cancellation in March to August 2020 because the pandemic with franchises’ suffering the loss of around $ 1.3 billion from their home game tickets revenue from the rest of regular season But, the main constraint is the contract with NBC as the official broadcaster of the Olympic Games that will be postponed to August 2021. It means the league has just about six months to complete this season and crown the Stanley Cup to a team. In my opinion, that plan is close to impossible to do.

A discussion involving the NHL and NHLPA resulted in a decision for the season set Jan. 13, 2021 as the target date to start the 2020–21 season. In this scenario, the Winter Classic Games between the St. Louis Blues and the Minnesota Wild and also the All-Stars Game scheduled in Florida Panthers’ home base would be postponed to next year in 2021. Then, the regular season games themselves will decrease to 52 or 56 games and will end in April 2021 before the playoffs start until the season concludes with a team crowned as the Stanley Cup champion.

The question of the season’s schedule has been answered. There will be a temporary division realignment for the 2020–21 season. This is due to the travel restriction over the US-Canada border. As we know, the league has seven Canadian teams and it’s possible to put them in the same division as the Canadian division. Then, the remaining 24 teams from the United States will be divided into three divisions based on geographical locations. Let’s call them the US West, Central, and East. Here are the new proposed divisions for the 2021 season.

Based on the picture above, the Minnesota Wild are assigned to the US Central division while the St. Louis Blues go to the US West Division. The Wild didn’t want to travel to the west to reduce travel costs. On the other hand, the Blues and their broadcast partners prefer the US Central for broadcasting reasons due to the time zone difference. Two teams should swap divisions with each other. First, the length of the US Central division will be reduced if the Blues go there, which will reduce travel costs among the teams that are going to play each other more often in division games. Second, the Blues will not be able to play rivalry games with the Chicago Blackhawks if they play in the US West division. It also applies to the Minnesota Wild, if they insist on playing in the US Central division due to travel costs reasons, they might lose their rivalry matchups with the Colorado Avalanche.

If the realignment applies, the next question is how the franchises will play in the regular season. There has yet to be a decision about that and also the teams’ allocation to play in the playoffs. But here’s a possible solution to determine the playoffs format. That realignment might clear up the West and East conference. So, the Stanley Cup Finals won’t have a matchup between teams from the same conference. Each division has four top teams to make a total of 16 teams in the playoffs. The NBA 16-team playoffs format can inspire the NHL’s first round playoffs matchup for this upcoming season. Those 16 teams will be ranked based on the points they scored in the regular season. Then, the first seed will play against the 16th seed, the second seed will play against the 15th seed, and so on. Some might argue the realignment will give the Canadian teams a bigger chance to make the Stanley Cup finals, maybe the hypothetical playoffs format will give similar results like past playoffs.

The hub city system might be instated once again in the 2021 season like it did when the 2019–20 season resumed. The latest confirmation said that each team will play in their home arena without fans for the time being. Then the league might permit the fans to come to the arenas in restricted capacity until everything is back to normal. The NHL is targeting arenas’ seats to be full of fans until the Stanley Cup Finals in the late of June, before the Olympic Games.