Breaking News
The NHL is planning to come back in a BIG way … so says commish Gary Bettman, who just announced the league is looking to return this summer with an insane 24-team playoff!!!
The 67-year-old just revealed the plans … outlining hockey’s steps to resume play after it suspended action back in March over the coronavirus pandemic.
Bettman says the league is working on finalizing details … but right now, the plan is for the regular season to be ruled officially over — with only the top-12 teams in each conference returning to action for postseason play this summer.
FYI, there are only 31 teams in the NHL — so how bad would that suck to be one of the 7 teams that didn’t make the cut?!
(California would get skunked BTW — the L.A. Kings, Anaheim Ducks and San Jose Sharks are the 3 worst teams in the West).
Training camps to prepare for the 24-team playoff would begin on July 1 under the new plan, Bettman says … and the league is gunning to put all the action in two hub cities — one in the East and one in the West.
Bettman stressed the league is taking all steps necessary to keep its players and staff healthy in a return to rinks, saying, “Ensuring health and safety has been central to all of our planning so far and will remain so.”
Bettman says the top-4 teams in each conference will get automatic bids to the 1st-round of official playoff play … and will face each other in round-robin games to determine seeding.
As for the other 8 teams in the conference, Bettman says they’ll square off in head-to-head series to determine which 4 will move on to face the top 4 seeds.
Bettman’s plan would allow the league to crown a Stanley Cup champion sometime this fall.