Stanley Cup Playoffs: Are there advantages to missing this season?

Could it be advantageous for teams to miss the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs?

With the NHL planning to put 24 teams in the Stanley Cup Playoffs to complete the 2019-2020 season, seven teams will be left out of the mix. If you are a fan of the Buffalo Sabres, Los Angeles Kings, Anaheim Ducks, San Jose Sharks, New Jersey Devils, Ottawa Senators or Detroit Red Wings, the summer playoff tournament won’t be as fun for you. The short term might not be as fun, but it could be beneficial down the road.

Being a fan of one of these teams, this is not surprising news even if the season wasn’t interrupted by the novel coronavirus pandemic. The season was long over by the March 12 stoppage and the playoffs were long gone. 10 to 12 games were left in the regular season for these teams.

The 24 team format protected the “anything can happen” scenario that bubble team’s faced for the traditional 16 team playoff format. Anything could have happened in those last dozen games to get some of the non-playoff teams in the 24 team tournament, but the line had to be drawn somewhere. There would be no need for a 24 team tournament if the season wasn’t interrupted.

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Business as usual for these teams and their fans to carry out whatever summer plans they can salvage normally. Hockey is a winter sport and for fans of the summer time, there will be no need to plan around your favorite team entering the tournament.

For the players of these non-playoff teams, there will be more time to train for next season and more time with their families, especially the ones who live in different parts of the world and had to hang back in North America to see how the unpredictable pandemic timeline would unfold.

One risk that the NHL and the 24 playoff teams will be facing is injury. After a four month layoff and a short training camp leading into the playoffs, injuries are bound to happen that can either affect the rest of the playoff season or the start of the 2020-21 campaign.

Every playoff team starts with mostly a clean slate of injury but no one really knows how this unprecedented timing and format will unfold concerning injuries. It will affect every team differently but very possible some will impact the 2020-21 season. The seven non-playoff teams will not have to worry about injuries carrying over through the condensed playoff and offseason into next season.

Depending on where the NHL holds these games, there is talk of only a few neutral cities holding these playoff series with no fans in attendance, the hot weather will affect the ice conditions. The arenas are equipped with powerful air conditioning units that won’t be consumed by thousands of fans in attendance and state of the art cooling units for the ice itself.

With that said, the ice conditions will be less than ideal, which can lead to choppy playing conditions and/or injury. All concerns that the seven non-playoff teams will not have to worry about.

As the playoff teams progress through the rigorous stretch of games in a shorter amount of time than normal, the teams who advance the farthest are the most likely to be compromised going into 2020-21. Next season will likely start in mid to late November, or early December.

There will be a condensed playoff schedule, condensed offseason, and a condensed 2020-21 season. What looks to suffer the most is the backend of the 2020-21 season. All those games in a shorter amount of time will be tough to overcome with injuries and/or fatigue.

There will only be one team that truly benefits from the rigorous condensed Stanley Cup playoffs and shortened timelines for events to follow, which will be the 2019-20 Stanley Cup Champion. For the other 23 teams in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, they will just have to deal with the rigorous schedule moving forward through the end of the 2020-21 season.

For the seven non-playoff teams, they will have a clean slate when they start back up whenever the 2020-21 season starts, and will be in a better situation to succeed when 31 teams all resume play throughout next season.

The upcoming high overall draft picks will give the non-playoff teams a great chance to build towards the future. San Jose Sharks traded their first round pick to the Ottawa Senators in the Erik Karlsson deal, so double impactful for the Senators and not as exciting for the Sharks.

With that fact aside, each team has been building towards the future before the pandemic stoppage even took place and have many factors to look forward to in the next few years. There will be great potential for a clearer path to a quicker turnaround by not participating in the 2019-20 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

All of this may be little consolation for the starving, diehard hockey fans of these seven non-playoff teams. When all else fails, there is always the “root against your rival” factor. That is always fun. Rooting against your rival team or rival teams will give rooting interest and help until all 31 teams resume play again. So there is something to look forward to in the short term.

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The benefits of missing these playoffs won’t be easy to see right away, but at least one of these seven teams is bound to make the 2020-21 Stanley Cup Playoffs with this advantage, making it beneficial in the long run.

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