For once everyone agrees and the NHL will finally do something about it
Pierre LeBrun just confirmed what fans have screamed for years. Almost everyone inside the NHL wants the divisional playoff format dead.
Speaking on Melnick in the Afternoon, LeBrun said he hears it from owners, managers, coaches and players: they'd rather go back to 1-8 conference seeding.
His exact framing was the striking part. People in every corner of the league are tired of this format.
Every corner. When owners and players agree on anything, you should check the weather for flying pigs. On this, they're aligned.
And this season handed the league its closing argument, written in the standings.
Look at the Atlantic. Buffalo won it with 109 points, and four more teams stacked up behind them at 99 points or better.
Five legitimate playoff teams, one division, all funneled into the same early-round wood chipper. Somebody great was going home in April no matter what.
Five 99-point teams in one division made the case for change
Now look west. Vegas won the Pacific with 95 points, 13th overall in the league. The Golden Knights are playing in the Stanley Cup Final tonight.
Meanwhile Colorado put together a 121-point monster of a season, best in hockey, and ran into Vegas in the conference final anyway. Under 1-8 seeding, those paths look completely different.
That's the core complaint. The current bracket punishes teams for living in a strong division and rewards teams for winning a weak one.
It's a marathon where some runners get a head start because of their zip code. Eighty-two games are supposed to buy you something.
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The 1-8 format is simple and ruthless: finish first, play eighth. Earn your seed, get your reward. The league used it for years before the 2014 realignment, and nobody needed it explained.
So why hasn't it changed? Format decisions run through the Board of Governors and the players' association, and the league has defended divisional rivalries as a television product for a decade.
But LeBrun's report suggests the defense is crumbling from the inside. When the people playing, coaching and owning the games all want out, the format is living on borrowed time.
The question is whether the NHL moves before another 100-point team gets fed into the grinder next April.
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JUNE 6, 2026
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| G | A | PTS | ||
| Mitch Marner | 3 | 1 | 4 | |
| Tomas Hertl | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Jordan Staal | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Sebastian Aho | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Taylor Hall | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jordan Martinook | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Andrei Svechnikov | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jackson Blake | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Jack Eichel | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Seth Jarvis | - | 1 | 1 | |
| William Karlsson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Brayden McNabb | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Eric Robinson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Jaccob Slavin | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Logan Stankoven | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Shea Theodore | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Frederik Andersen | - | - | - | |
| Rasmus Andersson | - | - | - | |
| Ivan Barbashev | - | - | - | |
| Brandon Bussi | - | - | - | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||