NHL has no appetite to expand playoffs beyond its 16-team tournament for the Stanley Cup
The NHL is the only major North American professional sports league that has not expanded its playoffs in recent years
Sixteen teams, each one needing to win 16 games over four rounds of best-of-seven series to lift the Stanley Cup, has been the way the NHL decides its champion for nearly four decades. That isn't changing any time soon.
The NHL is the only one of the major four North American professional sports leagues not to expand its playoffs in recent years. It is content with the current format and isn't looking to add more teams, a play-in round or anything else amid plenty of discussion about doing so.
"We’re not giving any thought to expanding the playoffs," Commissioner Gary Bettman said in advance of the playoffs, which begin Saturday. “We have no interest in it. What we have is working very well. When you look at how our playoffs play out, the number of six- and seven-game series, the competitiveness of it, nothing in anybody else’s playoffs rivals that.”
There is an added benefit, Bettman said: It makes the regular season more meaningful. A handful of players who have won the Cup in recent years agreed that they prefer the status quo.
