Rumor: NHL considering a radical change to playoff format to save the season.

The sudden and unexpected outbreak of the coronavirus has caused professional sports leagues around the world to shutdown on an emergency basis in an effort to minimize the spread of the deadly virus to both their players and their fans and now leagues are left scrambling trying to figure out how they will recover their seasons moving forward. Perhaps no league is facing a bigger challenge than the National Hockey League, a league that was just a few short weeks away from entering the most important part of their season the Stanley Cup Playoffs. 

The National Hockey League issued an update to its players earlier today that made it clear they do not intend to resume play for at least several weeks, a decision that will force them to truly condense what remained of their schedule. The league announced that it would allow players to return home, regardless of what country that may be for certain players, and ordered all of its players to remain under self quarantine until at least the end of the month of March. We also learned that the league was hopeful to resume camps sometime towards the end of April, again an indication that it will be several weeks before we even have the possibility of a return to hockey in the NHL.

The question now of course is how could the league possibly hope to salvage their season given such a condensed time frame to get everything done? Well we have an answer courtesy of one insider. According to a report from Russian hockey insider Igor Eronko of Sports Express, his sources have informed him that the NHL is currently considering a 24 team playoff format that would include a play-out or play-in round to decide which of the 24 teams will make it into the playoffs proper. Now I understand that this may sound like a wild idea, but Eronko's report was quickly backed up by TSN insider Darren Dreger who confirmed that there is at least one team in the NHL currently pushing for this idea to come to fruition.

From Dreger:

I know of one team that considers this a strong option. NHL schedule maker is literally working through all options and NHL clubs are submitting creative ideas as well.

I'll be honest at this point I will be happy if we get anything even remotely resembling the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and frankly a format involving 24 teams sounds like it could be pretty exciting all things considered. It remains to be seen what the NHL will decide in the end and no doubt how bad the pandemic turns out to be will play a major role.