The Carolina Hurricanes are the biggest losers of the NHL’s new pandemic playoff plan
Of course the Carolina Hurricanes would vote against an NHL playoff format that includes 24 teams. After all those years, those many years they were stranded somewhere in the grimy neighborhood of 24th, lost in postseason purgatory, they have finally crossed back over into the living world. And only when the Hurricanes can securely make the playoffs on their own merits does the NHL decide to start handing out lifelines and letting teams phone a friend.
Question: If the Hurricanes and Nashville Predators were outside the top eight and the New York Rangers and Chicago Blackhawks were inside, would the NHL be bending over backward to expand the playoffs in a pandemic? Or would housing 24 teams instead of 16 suddenly become a logistical riddle no one could ever solve?
Even as the NHL and NHLPA deserve considerable credit for being proactive and cooperative in their search for a way to get back on the ice, it’s curious, isn’t it, how the teams that benefit most from this format are the teams that end up splattered all over the national TV schedule. This is just a different twist on a familiar summer ritual.
“The format that was decided upon by the league is maybe not what we wanted initially,” Hurricanes general manager Don Waddell said Wednesday. “But we understand the NHL is trying to do what’s best for 31 teams and we’ll move forward with it.”
So no one should hold a grudge against the Hurricanes’ players for standing up for themselves in this situation, even if they were one of only two teams to cast a vote against the NHL’s return-to-play plan. No team has fought harder to achieve respectability by the standards that were previously set. No team lost more under the current format, except maybe the Pittsburgh Penguins, who now face Carey Price and the Montreal Canadiens in a best-of-five series — but could potentially end up as one of two host teams in the NHL’s hub-city plan.
Obviously, no one knows what impact these best-of-five play-ins will have on the Stanley Cup chances of the eight teams in each conference that didn’t get the invaluable bye they didn’t know they were playing for, as it turns out.
Normally, at the end of an 82-game season, attrition is as much a factor in the playoffs as talent and requiring some teams to win 19 games to win the Stanley Cup and others 16 -- assuming the first two rounds remain best-of-seven, which has yet to be determined -- would be all but insurmountable. That may not be the case after such a long layoff, and the extra games at playoff intensity may even be an advantage while the newly privileged cool their skates with less meaningful filler games. That explains the other “no” vote, on behalf of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
But there’s clearly a new and novel line drawn between the haves and have-nots, where the gap between fourth and fifth place is suddenly a yawning void and sixth place is no different than 12th. The COVID-19 pandemic obviously is an unanticipated and unprecedented circumstance, but there’s nothing unfamiliar about the Hurricanes feeling jobbed.
And naturally, the New York Rangers are waiting, a team the Hurricanes haven’t beaten in five tries. Then again, the Hurricanes’ regular-season record wasn’t too good against the Washington Capitals last season. Then again, they would have lost a best-of-five series to the Capitals.
“They’re excited about being a part of the playoffs,” Jordan Staal said, a subtle dig at his brother Marc, the Rangers’ defenseman. “It’s a team we’ve struggled with, so it’s a great challenge for us jumping right into it.”
The Hurricanes had some valid gripes here, but as Jordan Martinook pointed out earlier this week, it’s the details of the format to which they objected, not getting back on the ice. They’ll have to put their complaints aside and focus on the latter now. As former general manager Jim Rutherford was fond of saying, if you get in the playoffs, anything can happen — and often has, when the Hurricanes get a foot in the door.
There may be more teams in the playoffs this time around, but the Hurricanes are still only 16 — er, 19 — wins from the Stanley Cup.
This story was originally published May 27, 2020 at 2:56 PM.
