Season structure of the NHL

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The National Hockey League (NHL) season is divided into two sections. In the regular season teams play other teams in 82 games which determine their standings. The top eight teams in each conference enter an elimination tournament to determine the Stanley Cup champion.

1 Regular season
2 Stanley Cup playoffs
3 Criticisms
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Regular season

Each team in the NHL plays 82 regular season games, 41 games at home and 41 on the road. Teams used to play all other teams in the league at least once, but this is no longer the case following implementation of changes after the 2004-05 NHL lockout. Teams now play 10 interconference (that is, not in their own conference) games throughout the entire season, one game against each team in two of the three divisions in the opposite conference. On an observational basis, it seems as if these interconference games are block-scheduled in two different blocks (much as baseball does with interleague play). Teams also play 40 games against non-divisional, conference opponents (four games against each), and 32 games within their division (8 games against each). Two points are awarded for wins, one point for losing in overtime or a shootout, and zero points for a loss in regulation time. At the end of the regular season, the team that finishes with the most points in each division is crowned the division champion. Each conference consists of three divisions, so these three division champions and five more teams fill out each conference's playoff field. In total, 16 teams (three division champions and five additional teams, for a total of eight from each conference) qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The following tiebreaking procedures are used in case two teams have the same number of points: [1]

The fewer number of games played. This is only relevant during the season.
The greater number of games won.
The greater number of points earned in games between the tied clubs. If two clubs are tied, and have not played an equal number of home games against each other, points earned in the first game played in the city that had the extra game shall not be included. If more than two clubs are tied, the higher percentage of available points earned in games among those clubs, and not including any "odd" games, shall be used to determine the standing.
The greater differential between goals for and against for the entire regular season.

[edit] Stanley Cup playoffs

The Stanley Cup playoffs is an elimination tournament, where two teams battle to win a best-of-seven series to advance to the next round and become the NHL champion. The most recent Stanley Cup playoffs were the 2006 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

The current playoff scheme uses the following format: the regular-season division champions are seeded one through three, and then the next five teams with the best records in the conference are seeded four through eight. In the event of a tie in points in the standings, ties are broken using the tiebreaking procedure shown above.

The first round of the playoffs, or Conference Quarterfinals, consists of the first seed playing the eighth seed, the second playing the seventh, third playing the sixth, and the fourth playing the fifth. In the second round, or Conference Semifinals, the NHL re-seeds (unlike the NBA), with the top remaining conference seed playing against the lowest remaining seed, and the other two remaining conference teams pairing off. In the third round, the Conference Finals, the two remaining teams in each conference play each other, with the conference champions proceeding to the Stanley Cup Finals.

The higher-ranked team has the home-ice advantage: four of the seven games are played at this team's home venue — the first and second, and, where necessary, the fifth and seventh — with the other games played at the lower-ranked team's home venue.

In the playoffs if the score is tied at the end of the third period a continuous series of sudden-death overtime periods are played until a team scores. Overtime periods are full periods of twenty minutes (of five-on-five hockey), rather than the five minutes (of four-on-four hockey, followed by a shootout) in the regular season. The overtime is sudden death so the game ends as soon as either team scores a goal.

[edit] Criticisms

Because of the usage of a some-what "baseball-interleague format" for scheduling since the lockout, the NHL has received complaints from many teams who are unable to play rivals in the opposite conference. For example, Western Canadian teams play against traditional Eastern Conference opponents, like the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the Montreal Canadiens, only once in most years, and not all, in some seasons. The location of the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks in the West has cut them off from rivalries with the other Original 6 teams, who align in the East. New, exciting players, such as Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin, rarely play in arenas that are the venues for Western Conference teams (it is once per every three years), denying those fans a view of some of the NHL's most exciting stars. Another problem has been the frequency of games against one team (in some cases, 8 games with the same opponent), often several times in the span of a couple of weeks. As it was determined, the current system creates an unbalanced schedule, gives some teams benefits by playing weaker teams frequently, and punishes the weaker teams, by playing the better squads, often. An example last season, 2005–06, was when Detroit played the remaining 4 teams from their very weak Central Division (Chicago, Columbus, Nashville, and St. Louis) 32 times, inflating their playoff ranking. Other teams, such as Toronto, may have missed the playoffs because of their stiff competition within their division. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, however, announced that he will keep the division-rotation format for the 2007–2008 season. Scheduling for the 2008–2009 season is still unknown, as the NHL is rumored to re-align its 30 teams, based on standard time zone^{[citation needed]}.