NHL Playoffs Format Overview
- The NHL playoffs include 16 teams — eight from each conference — competing in four rounds of best-of-seven series until one team wins the Stanley Cup.
- Teams qualify by finishing in the top three of their division or as one of two Wild Card teams in their conference based on overall point total.
- The bracket is fixed after the regular season ends and is not re-seeded between rounds, so a Wild Card team that wins round one plays within the same bracket position regardless of who’s left.
- Playoff overtime is 5-on-5 sudden death with no shootouts. Once regulation expires, a game can only end on a goal scored in the first, second, third or even sixth overtime period.
The first pucks dropped in 2026 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs on April 18, and the ice is already getting intense with multiple overtime thrillers and some close series in Round 1.
Finding yourself trying to make sense of how each of the 16 teams ended up playing each other, and how the full NHL postseason work? The NHL Playoffs format can be a bit confusing and can, at times, feel a bit stacked against certain teams. Here’s a complete guide to how the NHL Playoffs work to help you enjoy all the action on the ice.
Don’t forget, you can watch the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs live on TV, every day during the NHL postseason with DIRECTV!
How are the NHL Playoff Brackets Set?
Twelve of the sixteen NHL playoff spots are claimed by the top three finishers in each of the NHL’s four divisions: the Atlantic, Metropolitan, Central and Pacific. The division winner with the best record in each conference earns the top seed, while the other division winner is seeded second. The third-place division finisher claims the third seed.
That leaves four more spots: the two Wild Card spots per conference, filled by the teams with the highest remaining point totals in each conference, regardless of which division they play in. These teams become the seventh and eighth seeds.
How Do Wild Card Slots Work in the NHL Playoffs?
The Wild Card is a conference-wide competition, not a divisional one: This means that teams who are arguably better can occasionally get muscled out of the Wild Card race by a team with a worse record. This postseason calculus also occasionally results in one division sending more teams to the playoffs than another. That’s intentional: The format is designed to reward actual team performance over geographic fairness.
The Wild Card component of the NHL playoffs has produced some of the most memorable playoff runs in history, when teams that limped into the postseason with the eighth seed have found a spark and made deep runs. These storylines are particularly exciting, since Wild Card teams face a tougher road being paired with the top seeds in their conference in the opening round.
How Do Wild Card Tiebreakers Work in NHL Playoffs?
When teams finish with identical point totals, tiebreakers operate in this order:
- Regulation wins
- Regulation plus overtime wins (ROW)
- Total wins including shootouts
- Head-to-head record
- Goal differential
How to Read the NHL Playoffs Bracket
The NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs bracket is set at the end of the regular season and stays fixed through all four rounds.
Within each conference, the structure follows a consistent pattern:
- The top division winner plays the lower wild card team (8-seed)
- The other division winner plays the higher wild card (7-seed)
- The two non-winners in each division play each other (2-seed and 3-seed)
This results in two separate paths to the conference final of each conference bracket, so teams locked into one side won’t face anyone from the other until the very end. The rounds include Round 1, the Conference Semifinals, the Conference Final and the Stanley Cup Final, played between the last teams standing from each conference.
Notably, no re-seeding of the bracket occurs once play begins. That’s different from how some other sports handle it, and it makes it possible for a Wild Card team to reach the conference finals without ever facing the top seed if that seed is on the opposite side of the bracket. It’s also possible for the two best teams in a conference to meet in the second round if they happen to land in the same half of the bracket.
The fixed structure was introduced with the current four-division format in 2013-14 to protect division rivalries early in the playoffs and keep the bracket geographically coherent. Before that, the league re-seeded teams by conference after each round so that the highest remaining seed always played the lowest.
How Do Series Work in the NHL Playoffs?
Each matchup in every round of the NHL Playoffs is played as a best-of-seven series. The first team to win four games advances. This means series can end in four games or extend to five, six or seven games.
Home-ice advantage through the first two rounds goes to the team that finished higher in the regular-season standings. The higher seed hosts Games 1, 2, 5 and 7, while the lower seed hosts Games 3, 4 and 6. In the conference finals and the Stanley Cup Final, home ice belongs to whichever team had the better regular-season record. This makes the biggest difference when a Wild Card team makes it to the Final.
That arrangement concentrates the early games on home ice for the higher seed, then sends the series on the road for Games 3 and 4 before returning for the potential deciding games. If the home team wins both of the series opening games, it sets them up in a strong position to continue the series on the road, and, conversely, if the away team wins one or both of the games, the higher seed faces a tougher situation.
A team has come back from a 3-0 series deficit to win four times in NHL history, with the Toronto Maple Leafs being the first to do it in 1942.
Why Are There No Shootouts in the NHL Playoffs?
One notable difference between the NHL regular season and postseason is the lack of shootouts to decide games where overtime ends in a tie.
Instead, playoff overtime is 5-on-5 sudden death, rather than 3-on-3 — and it doesn’t end until one team scores, with consecutive 20-min periods being played until a winner emerges. The record for the longest playoff game in NHL history stands at six overtime periods.
The no-shootout rule is designed to ensure a championship series isn’t decided by what amounts to an individual skills competition. This dynamic has produced some of the most exciting and iconic games in NHL playoffs history.
How Has the NHL Playoffs Format Changed over the Years?
The NHL has featured some version of a playoff tournament since 1917, when just four teams competed for the Stanley Cup. The format has expanded and contracted with the league itself.
The “Original Six” era — from 1942 to 1967 — saw only four of six teams qualify each season. The league doubled in size in 1967 and expanded the playoff field to eight teams, then to twelve. The move to 16 playoff teams came in 1979-80, following the merger with the World Hockey Association that brought the league to 21 franchises.
For most of the 1990s and 2000s, the eight best teams in each conference qualified without regard to division, and teams were re-seeded between rounds. The four-division, division-winner-plus-wild-card format that exists today was introduced for the 2013-14 season when the NHL realigned its conferences, and it’s been in place ever since. The only exception was during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the 2020 postseason used a temporary play-in round due to the abbreviated regular season.
The current format has generated plenty of criticism and controversy, including persistent arguments that the fixed bracket unfairly rewards or punishes teams based on where they play, not how they perform.
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Frequently asked questions
How do teams qualify for the NHL Playoffs?
Is the NHL playoff bracket re-seeded after each round?
What is a Wild Card team in the NHL?
How many teams make the NHL Playoffs?
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