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Both 12th place Teams beat out the 5th place Teams
The NHL should keep the 24 team format, with some changes.
The NHL wrapped up their play-in round of the playoffs last night, and the level of play and excitement has not been a disappointment. The NHL should seriously consider adopting a 24 team playoff format permanently.
I don’t think that it would be a good idea to have a five-game series for the bottom 16 teams. Five game series take too much time after the regular season is over. The NHL would not serve their fans well by allowing the top regular-season teams to get stale while they wait for the bottom 16 to determine who advances to the round of 16.
Instead, I would prefer to see a two-game, total point, play-in series. If the series is tied after 120 minutes of play, then the tiebreaker would be unlimited, sudden death overtime.
I know that a two-game, total point series is not usually a Hockey thing. But it has the advantage of giving both teams a home game, and it allows a team to recover if they have a bad first game.
The regular season ends on a Sunday early in April. The two-game, play-in series would take place on Monday and Tuesday as a home-on-home series. The winners would then go on to meet the top teams in the traditional four-round, seven-game series that the NHL is famous for.
