The NHL Stanley Cup playoffs start in early April and last 7 to 8 weeks. There are always surprises and they often come in the first round when there are some match-ups between teams finishing high in the standings and teams finishing much lower. The winner of the playoffs has been awarded the Stanley Cup since the league began in 1917.
Each series in the playoffs is a best of seven affair - the first to win four games - and for each the team that finished highest in the regular season standings has home-ice advantage. Having home-ice advantage means having the first two games played in your home rink and, if necessary, games 5 and 7 also at home.
NHL: Eastern Conference and Western Conference
The league has two conferences, the Eastern and Western, and since the last NHL expansion in 2000 when they added the Minnesota Wild and the Columbus Blue Jackets, each conference has three divisions of 5 teams. That makes for 15 teams in each conference for a total of 30 clubs (6 of the teams are based in Canada, 24 in the United States).
Sixteen of the 30 teams, 8 in each conference, make the playoffs, more than 50 percent of teams overall, a higher ratio than in either the NFL or Major League Baseball. The 30 team NBA uses essentially the same playoff format as the NHL, with 16 teams in the playoffs and 14 who do not make it in.
Conference Winners Meet in Stanley Cup Final
The two NHL conferences play off amongst themselves and each conference survivor plays in the Stanley Cup final. Each conference seeds teams one through eight, with the team with the most points seeded in first place, the team with the second most in second place and so on. There is a notable exception to this.
The exception is that each of the three division winners in a conference will be ranked in the top three, even if one does not make that position point-wise. For example the team who won their division with a lower point total than the other two division winners will always be ranked in third overall in the conference, even if teams who finished second or lower in another division had more points. This manages to give some weight to winning your division.
Eight Playoff Series to Begin Stanley Cup Playoffs
To begin the playoffs each conference has the first seeded team play the eighth seeded team, the second play the seventh, the third play the sixth and the fourth and fifth play. So that first round of the playoffs has 8 series, four in each conference.
After all 8 best-of-seven first round playoff matches are decided the seeding is done again, again based on the final regular season standings. If, for example, in one conference the top four ranked teams all win then the first seeded team would then play the fourth and second would play the third. If the first seeded team in the other conference beat the eighth but the seventh seeded team pulled an upset and beat the second seeded team, then in that conference the first would play the seventh and the other two remaining teams would play one another.
Once those four quarter-final series are over the two semi-finals series will begin, with the remaining two clubs from each conference playing one another. The winners of those semi-final series will then oppose one another in the Stanley Cup final.
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