NHL announces return to play and draft lottery format; Ducks season is over
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announced the league’s official plans to return to play on Tuesday afternoon. While negotiations with the NHL Players Association will continue on some of the finer details, the general framework has been agreed upon.
The league plans to return with 24 teams, meaning the bottom seven teams, the Buffalo Sabres, New Jersey Devils, Anaheim Ducks, Los Angeles Kings, San Jose Sharks, Ottawa Senators, and Detroit Red Wings will have their seasons ended effective immediately.
The play-in tournament is essentially a mechanism to get the field down to the traditional 16 teams. The top four teams in both the Western and Eastern Conferences will receive a bye to begin, then will play each other round-robin-style in order to determine their seeding. These eastern teams are the Boston Bruins, Tampa Bay Lightning, Washington Capitals, and Philadelphia Flyers. The Western teams are the St. Louis Blues, Colorado Avalanche, Vegas Golden Knights, and Dallas Stars. These teams are guaranteed to be in the actual 16-team Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The remaining eight spots would be determined by a best-of-five play-in series between the remaining 16 teams. In the East, these series will consist of the Pittsburgh Penguins vs. the Montreal Canadiens, the Carolina Hurricanes vs. the New York Rangers, the New York Islanders vs. the Florida Panthers, and the Toronto Maple Leafs vs. the Columbus Blue Jackets. The West matchups will consist of the Edmonton Oilers vs. the Chicago Blackhawks, the Nashville Predators vs. the Arizona Coyotes, the Vancouver Canucks vs. the Minnesota Wild, and the Calgary Flames vs. the Winnipeg Jets.
The play-in series will have playoff overtime rules, while the top-four round robin series will be played with regular season overtime and shootout rules. Ties will be broken by regular season points percentage.
The tournament will occur in two as-yet-to-be-determined hub cities: one in for the Western Conference and one for the Eastern Conference. The cities rumored to be in contention to serve as these hub cities include Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Edmonton, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Pittsburgh, Toronto and Vancouver.
As of the current moment, training camps for teams to prepare for this return to play tournament will not begin until July 1st at the earliest.
Details of the draft lottery were also announced alongside the return-to-play plans. The lottery will take place on June 26th, before the play-in tournament. The seven teams not participating in the play-in tournament will have the seven best odds to win the first overall pick. This includes the Ducks, who will have an 8.5% chance of winning the Alexis Lafreniere sweepstakes and an overall 26.1% chance of picking in the top three spots.
The remaining eight lottery spots will be drawn as placeholders (meaning they will be represented by Team A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H) with the teams getting those picks determined by points percentage of those who are knocked out of the best-of-five play-in tournament.
While there are still certain details that need to be worked out, including the actual start date of the tournament dictated by regional health guidelines as well as safety precautions for players and staff, these official plans represent the first major step in the road back to hockey.
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