More Details Emerge on NHL Return to Play

Firstly, I wanted to comment on yesterday’s post. Those were merely my opinions on the matter at hand. We live in a world where politics comes into our lives constantly whether we want it to or not. I was stating my opinion on the matter and I did not wish to trample on anyone’s feet. I stand by my opinions, but do not wish them to be taken as gospel.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand: hockey! The NHL has made some more details on the Return to Play plan a little clearer to the fans.

In an updated article on NHL.com by Tom Gulitti, it was mentioned that “189 games will not be completed” and that the league will go into a Qualifying Round (which I believe is not considered a part of the playoffs, if I am understanding things right. They will reportedly be using regular season overtime and shootout rules in this round, for instance.) and round-robin to seed the playoffs. It will take place “in two hub cities” and the dates are to be determined. The hub cities will also be announced at a later date.

The Qualifying Round and the playoffs are anticipated to take place “over the summer and into the early fall” according to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman in the Gulitti article.

The major news that we will be hearing, hopefully soon, is the length of the first and second round series. According to Gulitti, the Return to Play Committee (which includes NHL executives as well as NHLPA executives and five players: Ron Hainsey of the Ottawa Senators, Connor McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers, Mark Scheifele of the Winnipeg Jets, John Tavares of the Toronto Maple Leafs and James van Riemsdyk of the Philadelphia Flyers) has yet to decide on this detail.

According to Gulitti, the Eastern and Western Conference Finals will be best-of-seven games series, as will the Stanley Cup Final. Gulitti said that Bettman told NBCSN that “there is a slim possibility the final three series can be played in the home arenas of the teams that reach those rounds, but that would require a substantial change in the outlook of the pandemic.” He continued that it is more likely that “all games will be played in the hub cities without fans in attendance.”

Bettman also said in the NBCSN interview that “it’s not required that the Eastern Conference teams have to play in an Eastern hub city and the Western Conference teams have to play in a Western hub city.”

The hub cities, Gulitti pointed out, “will depend on the circumstances in that city.” He cited that, although “Edmonton, Toronto and Vancouver are among the cities being considered, the current edict in Canada requiring those who enter the country to be quarantined for 14 days would probably preclude one of those cities from being selected.” Bettman said that they “are talking to the Canadian government about it” because “if we get done with training camp and we want to go to a Canadian city and to do that we have to quarantine for another 14 days, that isn’t going to work.”

Gulitti said that those training camps “could open no earlier than July 10 as part of Phase 3 of the Return to Play Plan, and Commissioner Bettman said the NHL believes the qualifying and first two rounds of the playoffs can be completed in a little more than a month.”

All of this is being done to crown “a worthy Stanley Cup champion who will have run the postseason gauntlet that is unique to the NHL” as Bettman put it.

NHL Announces Return to Play, Draft Lottery Format

The NHL announced today that they will be resuming the 2019-20 season in the form of the playoffs. It will be the 24-team format with the 16-team play-in round that was discussed earlier.

One change does see the top four teams in each conference playing a round-robin mini-tournament to determine seeding in the second round. This part is different from the original proposal and will help keep those teams with a bye in the first round in game shape.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman recorded a video outlining the whole system and thanking the NHLPA and its head Don Fehr for helping them get to this point. He also mentioned that the health and safety of all those involved were and “are paramount” in this whole thing. He said that they are resuming because the fans and players wanted it, although I suspect that the relaxing of some of the health guidelines in various jurisdictions might have played a stronger part in that.

As for the logistics, Tom Gulitti of NHL.com ran those down. The Qualifying and Seeding Round Robin (the first round) “will be held at two hub cities to be identified – one for the 12 participating Eastern Conference teams and one for the 12 Western Conference teams – and begin at a date to be determined.” Gulitti listed the candidate cities as: Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Edmonton, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Pittsburgh, Toronto and Vancouver.

Gulitti quoted the Bettman video when he said that “the decision on the hub cities and when the Stanley Cup Playoffs will begin will depend on COVID-19 conditions, testing ability and government regulations. A comprehensive system for testing will be in place in each hub city. Each team will be permitted to travel a maximum of 50 personnel, including players, coaches and staff, to its hub city.”

In this situation, the Devils, Sabres, Ducks, Kings, Sharks and Senators each kind of get the shaft here. They were never officially eliminated from playoff contention, but were realistically not going to make it. Only the Red Wings, eliminated back in February, were officially out.

Their season now turns to the Draft. And since this is a Devils-centric blog, that is really what we should be talking about anyway. The 2020 Draft Lottery Drawing will include 15 teams according to Gulitti in a separate article on NHL.com.

They will be the seven teams already on the outside (including the Devils) plus the eight teams that lose in the Qualifying Round. The first phase will take place on June 26.

The lottery will bet held “based on 3-6 drawings over one or two phases.” Phase one will see the teams who did not qualify plus “eight placeholder positions” get three drawings on June 26, which Gulitti points out, is before the Qualifying Round.

The odds for the teams like the Devils who did not qualify for the playoffs “were determined by their point percentage during the 2019-20 regular season” since not everyone finished with the same total of games played.

The eight placeholder spots will be held for the teams who will be eliminated in round one of the playoff format.

Gulitti said that the first drawing in phase one will tell us who gets the first pick in the Draft. Drawing two will determine the second pick and drawing three will determine who picks third overall.

He continued to say that “if a team not in the bottom seven wins any of the first three drawings, a Second Phase will be conducted among the eight teams eliminated in the Qualifying Round. That would take place between the end of the Qualifying Round and the first round of the playoffs.”

If each of the first three First Phase picks are won by one of the teams on the outside of the playoffs, Gulitti notes that the Second Phase would not be necessary and the picks four through seven would be assigned to the remaining non-layoff teams “in inverse order of their regular-season point percentage, and picks 8-15 will be assigned to the teams that are eliminated from the Qualifying Round in inverse order of their point percentage.”

He also said that if “a Qualifying Round losing team wins one or two of the top three picks, any bottom-seven team not in the top three will be assigned their pick in inverse order of point percentage.”

If a Qualifying Round team wins all three of the top picks, picks four through ten will go to teams “in inverse order of their point percentage.”

A Second Phase and the number of drawings in it would depend on the number of picks won in the First Phase by the Qualifying Round teams.

As Ottawa General Manager Pierre Dorian said in April (as quoted in Tom Gulitti’s story): “We did our homework, and in this plan of the rebuild [talking about the Senators] we always felt that this 2020 draft would be one of the deepest that’s come along in many years.”

The Devils currently stand with a 7.5-percent chance to win the first overall pick. They finished with a .493 regular season points percentage.

Gulitti did note that “New Jersey received better lottery odds than Buffalo because it had a worse regulation/overtime winning percentage (.348 compared to Buffalo’s .406).”

The Detroit Red Wings currently stand with the best odds to win the Alexis Lafreniere sweepstakes, ending the season with a .275 points percentage, giving them an 18.5 chance of gaining the first overall pick.

Of the teams who qualified for the playoffs in the play-in round, Montreal has the best odds in the drawing, should they lose in the first round of the playoffs. They finished with a .500 points percentage.