NHL finally clears up uncertainty regarding stats from 16 team play in round

While the NHL has made big strides over the past two weeks in its Return to Play plan, there’s still a lot of logistics to be sorted out before the league hits the ice again. Dates, schedules and… well just about everything is up in the air right now as the league continues in Phase 2 of its four phased plan.

What we do know is that, at some point, play will resume in a 24 team playoff format with a 16 team “play in” round. The top two teams in each division will earn a bye to the second round of the playoffs. Or… at least that’s what hockey fans believed to be the case, except for some reason the NHL is insistent that the “play in” round is technically NOT part of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It’s something else, I guess?

For whatever reason the NHL has been insistent that the “play in” round is NOT part of the playoffs… or is it? ESPN’s Greg Wyshnski has been as perplexed by this as any other hockey fan so he reached out to league officials with a question that will finally get to the bottom of things.

“Will stats from the play in round be counted as career playoff points?”

What if Connor McDavid scores 10 goals in the Edmonton Oilers' first game against the Chicago Blackhawks? Does he now own the all-time goals scored record in a playoff game? Or, what if Carey Price posts three straight shutouts to blank the Pittburgh Penguins in a best of 5 series. Does he get credit on his career playoff stats?

The answer: Yep.

Check it out:

From the Dept. of “Is The Qualification Round a Playoff Round?”: The NHL tells ESPN that stats from the play-in and round-robin games ARE PLAYOFF STATS, and will be tabulated as such. This comes after the league officially named stats-based regular-season award winners today: David Pastrnak and Alex Ovechkin shared the Rocket Richard (goals); Tuukka Rask and Jaroslav Halak won the Jennings Trophy (goals against); and Leon Draisaitl won his first career Art Ross Trophy (points).

Okay… so let me get this straight. The play in round is NOT the playoffs, but points scored count as playoff points. This makes absolutely ZERO sense, just drop the act already and call it the playoffs. Who cares anyways? This is clearly an unprecedented time, you’re holding an unprecedented playoff format. Just own it and move on.