Rumor: The NHL's expanded playoff format could extend beyond this season.

The National Hockey League has been forced to suspend play in the 2019 - 2020 NHL regular season but the league remains optimistic that it will be able to find a way to salvage the season. One of the potential solutions that has been proposed to salvage the season has been an extended playoff format that would include a larger number of teams than the 16 we normally see. 

The most commonly proposed extended format would include a total of 24 teams and would see the bottom seeded teams playing in the early stages of the tournament in something resembling a wild card round. Many have proposed that this round could drop to a 5 game series, although at this time all of this is purely theoretical. Interestingly enough though there is at least one NHL insider, an extremely well connected one at that, who believes that this playoff format could be a preview of the future of the NHL.

Sportsnet National Hockey League insider Chris Johnston recently participated in a special segment of Hockey Central from home and it was during that segment that he revealed his belief that the extended playoff format will become a thing of the future.

"I actually believe that this will extended into the future, that we will see an extended playoffs beyond this season.. whatever is left of it," said Johnston. "I think going to 32 teams with Seattle coming it makes sense to probably have a 20 team playoff anyway with some Wild Cards at the bottom, say a 7 vs 10 or 8 vs 9 playoff format kind of system. To me this can be the start of bridging to the next year while also being fair to all those teams that were right there in the playoff hunt on March 11th when the last games were played."

That would be a drastic change in the National Hockey League to be certain, but given the increasing number of teams in the league it certainly does not seem like the craziest idea I have ever heard. This would also mean that the NHL could sell more playoff games to the television networks and the individual team owners would have an increased chance of selling playoff tickets each season as well. Both of those would mean increased revenue for the NHL, so it would be no surprise to me if they were already planning this.