NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has no plans to change the league's playoff format despite continued complaints from teams, players, and fans.
"More than comfortable," Bettman told reporters Wednesday, including The Athletic's Pierre LeBrun and Michael Russo. "It gives us a sensational first round. Probably the best playoff first round in any sport. We get more games and longer series as a result of the format.
"And you can always pick at certain situations in any given year and say, 'Well, I'd like it to be different that year.' But if you look at the body of work that our playoffs represent over time, what we have now works extraordinarily well."
The flaws of the current system are being exposed dramatically in the 2025-26 Western Conference standings. In the NHL's overall standings, the Colorado Avalanche (97 points) rank first, the Dallas Stars (94 points) sit second, and the Minnesota Wild (90 points) are tied for third. However, if the standings hold, one of these teams will be eliminated in Round 1 since all three are in the Central Division.
In contrast, the Utah Mammoth, fourth in the Central Division with 76 points, would get to go through the significantly weaker Pacific Division. As the top wild-card team in the Western Conference, the Mammoth would be slated to face the Pacific-leading Anaheim Ducks, who have 77 points, in the first round.
Situations like these have caused many to devalue the importance of the regular season, but Bettman scoffed at the notion.
"If you look at the races for the playoffs, I think it's virtually impossible to say that the regular season has no meaning," Bettman said. "To the contrary, every game counts."
From 1998-99 until the NHL realigned to four divisions in 2013-14, the league's playoff format awarded the top three seeds in each conference to division winners, with seeds four through eight filled by the next highest-ranked teams in each conference.
