NHL Update: Re-Seeding and Best of Seven

The NHL continues to iron out details on a return to play and TSN’s Pierre LeBrun has some tidbits for us. Some morsels:

Keep in mind, this is just the format agreement. Still to come are Phase 3 (training camp) and Phase 4 (games/hubs/protocol) which still have to be negotiated. Only preliminary talks so far on those fronts.

— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) June 4, 2020

Originally the NHL was gonna roll with a bracket based off the traditional playoff format. Now it’ll be the top four teams in each conference with an auto berth, while the remaining eight enter via a best of five play-in series.

The Flyers would play a round robin with Boston, Tampa, and Washington to determine top four seeding, with regular season points-percentage serving as the tiebreaker. Then we’d re-seed after the opening round and move to best of seven with the Flyers/Bruins/Lightning and Caps jumping in.

Make sense? It’s a little chaotic but this is what we’ve got.