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Breaking Down The NHL's Plan Also Draisaitl Wins Art Ross (I think?)

May 26, 2020, 5:43 PM ET [3 Comments]
Sean Maloughney
Edmonton Oilers Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Whoooooooo boy..........

Today Gary Bettman spoke on what the NHL's plans are for the playoffs, draft, post-season and beyond. I can tell you with the utmost certainty that it is definitely a plan, yessir there were bullet points and everything which tells you how serious this plan is.

As we already knew, the NHL has agreed upon a 24 team playoff which would involve the top 4 teams in the West and East based on point percentages, receiving a buy while the remaining 16 teams would participate in a play-in playoff that will be a best of 5 series. Once that is all said and done the actual 16 team playoffs will begin. The first two rounds will either best best of 5 or best of 7 series (still undecided) while the Conference and Cup Final would absolutely be best of 7.

Bettman stated that the 2019/2020 regular season should be considered officially over.

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DRAISAITL WINS ART ROSS??!!


According to Bettman, the regular season is officially done and awards can begin to be voted on meaning that Leon Draisaitl officially wins the Art Ross Trophy for the 2019/2020 season. Draisaitl leads the league, going 43-67-110 over his 71 games played. He was 13 points higher than the next best player; his teammate Connor McDavid.

Draisaitl is an absolute competitor and I'm sure he would have much preferred to have this honor under normal circumstances where no one would think to add an asterisk to it. Regardless, this was a phenomenal season for the 24 year old German born player and even if the season had finished normally, I'm sure we would have seen this play out the same. Next step.... Hart!

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SO..... THAT DRAFT...

Here is where things get absolutely bizarre. The league has announced the 2020 NHL Draft Lottery will be held on June 26th. For those scratching their heads, trying to figure out how a draft can be done before the playoffs decide rankings... well join the club.

The Lottery will be decided the same way it has for the past few seasons, with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd overall picks being drawn by the lottery.

The bottom 7 teams in the league are placed in this order; Detroit, Ottawa, San Jose (owned by Ottawa), LA, Anaheim, New Jersey, and Buffalo. The other 8 teams to make up the bottom 15 are Teams A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H... stay with me here everyone.

The Alphabet Teams will be the eight teams that lose in the play-in best of 5 series with Team A having the highest percentage chance of the Alphabet Teams of winning the lottery (8th highest total) and Team H having the lowest percent chance.

If all three of the lottery teams chosen are from the bottom 7 teams, than the lottery is complete and the Draft will occur sometime once all playoff games are completed.

If any of the Alphabet Teams are selected, a Phase 2 Lottery will have to occur once the best of 5 play in series have all been completed.

The reason that it has been decided like this is simple; the NHL is desperate for some of that sweet sweet TV revenue and wants to push through a Draft Lottery as soon as possible to have some type of TV event.

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EDMONTON STILL BEING CONSIDERED AS A HUB CITY

Currently ten cities are being considered as Hub Cities to host playoff games. As reported earlier, Edmonton is one of those cities, as are Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Vegas, LA, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Toronto, and Vancouver.

If it does end up being two cities to host all of the games I would bet that it will be Vegas and Toronto. It checks all the boxes for East and West coverage, as well as Canadian and American. Personally I still believe Edmonton is one of the safest options to host. Bettman said within the next three to four weeks they will have to come to a decision.

EDMONTON VS CHICAGO

With all this being said, we are likely looking at sometime in the middle to end of July as a beginning to the playoffs. We can now officially state that the Edmonton Oilers will play the Chicago Blackhawks in pseudo Round 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Of course everything above is dependent on our current environment and if new issues arise surrounding the COVID 19 pandemic. If things suddenly take a turn for the worse this entire thing could still be cancelled, ending the 2019/2020 season entirely.

Hopefully this does not end up being the case and we can all finally start talking about real hockey once more.

Thanks for reading!
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