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The top four clubs in each NHL conference wouldn't just be playing meaningless games against each other to prep for their subsequent playoff matchups.

Under the 24-team playoff proposal the NHL and the NHLPA are reportedly discussing, the eight best teams will jockey for seeding even while being guaranteed a playoff spot, reports Sportsnet's Chris Johnston.

In the prospective plan, the Boston Bruins, Tampa Bay Lightning, Washington Capitals, and Philadelphia Flyers would play a round robin against each other in the East, while the St. Louis Blues, Colorado Avalanche, Vegas Golden Knights, and Dallas Stars would do so as well in the West.

These games would help determine how those teams are seeded No. 1 through No. 4 when the playoffs begin, according to Johnston, who cautioned that the plan still hasn't been finalized or approved.

It was reported Wednesday that the format would be organized by conference standings and that the top four seeds in each conference would play a three-game tuneup tournament. However, it wasn't previously clear whether those contests would carry any weight.

In the proposed postseason structure, the 16 other teams would take part in bracketed best-of-five play-in series to determine their next opponents.

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Common sense may prevail when it comes to contracts that are scheduled to conclude at the end of next month.

The NHL intends to agree on a slide with the NHLPA that would extend all contracts through the end of the 2019-20 season, an NHL source told The Athletic's Michael Russo.

This would apply to NHL players in the final years of their deals, as well as minor leaguers on two-way contracts.

However, whether it will apply to coaches and other team employees remains to be seen, because they don't have a union of their own.

"The dynamic is different without collective representation," the source told Russo.

June 30 is traditionally the final day of the league year before the new one begins July 1. While the league and the players' union are reportedly making progress on a 24-team playoff format, a timetable for the NHL's return hasn't yet been determined.

St. Louis Blues captain Alex Pietrangelo, Arizona Coyotes sniper Taylor Hall, and Washington Capitals goaltender Braden Holtby are among the league's pending unrestricted free agents.

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The NHL appears to be making progress in determining the parameters of its eventual return, as Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman reported Wednesday that the league and the players' union are working toward a 24-team playoff format based on points percentage within conference standings.

Details are limited, and the proposal still needs team and player approval before the league can move forward. We do know that under this structure, the top four seeds in each conference would get byes, while teams seeded fifth through 12th would be placed in conference brackets and clash in best-of-five, play-in series.

The winners of theses play-in series would each advance to face a corresponding top-four seed in a best-of-seven clash. For example, the winner of the clash between No. 5 and No. 12 would play the No. 4 seed, while the winner of No. 8 versus No. 9 would play the team atop the conference standings.

It's different, but it's playoff hockey. After months of uncertainty, we'll surely take what we can get. With a faint light beginning to appear at the end of the tunnel, let's explore which of the potential play-in series would be the most intriguing.

Penguins (5) vs. Canadiens (12)

This is a major mismatch based on season stats, as the Canadiens have the fewest points of any team that would qualify under the expanded format. They do, however, possess the ultimate X-factor: goaltender Carey Price. He's far removed his 2015 MVP form, but the 32-year-old is still capable of winning games by himself. He also owns a combined .922 save percentage over his last three playoff appearances. Could he get hot enough to win three of five games? We're certainly not ruling it out.

The Penguins, meanwhile, are always one of the last teams anyone wants to meet in the playoffs. They're dangerous at even strength, and their lack of power-play success so far this season is not indicative of the top unit's talent. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are as potent as ever, and Pittsburgh, after being ravaged by injuries all season, should finally be able to ice a healthy roster following a lengthy layoff. That's a scary thought for the rest of East's playoff teams.

Flames (8) vs. Jets (9)

It's a shame this potential series would have to proceed without fans, as Calgary and Winnipeg boast some of the most electric playoff atmospheres in the sport. Still, spectators or not, this series, on paper, projects to be one of the most tightly contested of the play-in tournament.

The Flames and Jets have both ridden highs and lows all season, with each team battling bouts of inconsistency and weaknesses in certain areas of the roster. That said, Calgary and Winnipeg both have multiple game-breakers capable of dominating a shortened series. How will Matthew Tkachuk set the physical tone after going months without agitating anybody? Can Blake Wheeler and Mark Scheifele outduel Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan? Will Connor Hellebuyck's Vezina-calibre regular-season form carry over after such a lengthy hiatus?

Let's hope we find out.

Maple Leafs (8) vs. Blue Jackets (9)

The Maple Leafs and Blue Jackets could not be further apart in terms of roster construction. One team is built around a deep group of star forwards primed to outscore anybody, while the other is a relentlessly hard-working group always ready to systematically frustrate opponents. Yet here they are, essentially deadlocked in the Eastern Conference standings and on the verge of a potential playoff meeting. Which team's style is better suited to a shortened series with virtually no margin for error?

After Game 7 losses in back-to-back seasons at the hands of the Boston Bruins - who would, of course, face the winner of this series - Toronto's 2019-20 campaign has been all about playoff progress since Day 1. The players made no mistake promoting that narrative, either, often looking disengaged for long stretches of underwhelming regular-season play. Perhaps the arrival of the postseason could be the jolt the Maple Leafs need to finally resemble the contenders many expected them to be.

The Blue Jackets, on the other hand, surprisingly hung around the playoff picture despite losing major star power last offseason. Columbus improbably rode some white-hot goaltending to stay in the mix, but the team should get Seth Jones, Cam Atkinson, and potentially Josh Anderson back from injury in time for the playoffs. In addition to those reinforcements, we all know head coach John Tortorella will have his crew ready to play. Just ask the 2019 Tampa Bay Lightning.

Oilers (5) vs. Blackhawks (12)

First things first: The Blackhawks should be extremely grateful if the playoffs are indeed expanded. Chicago had lost six more games than it won before the league halted play, and the squad wasn't particularly impressive in any team metrics. There are major revenue implications in including the Windy City's hockey-mad market in any playoff format, so we'll let it slide and just enjoy the show. Plus, the slight possibility of Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews catching lightning in a bottle for one last deep playoff run is incredibly intriguing.

But the real reason to get excited about this matchup is Connor McDavid playing in meaningful games. The world's most dynamic player has only 13 playoff contests under his belt since the Oilers drafted him in 2015, and it's fair to assume the hockey world is ready to watch him perform on the biggest stage, even if it's not under the traditional format. Watching him and Leon Draisaitl - the NHL's leading scorer at the time of the pause - go on a run in the wide-open Western Conference would be a treat.

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As with most things in the world right now, the short-term future of pro sports is murky. While some sports in some parts of the world have resumed, others remain suspended indefinitely. Nobody knows for sure when, or in what form, they'll be back.

It seems evident that when sports do return, they'll do so without fans in attendance. We've already seen that happen with pro baseball in South Korea, and with pro wrestling, MMA, and NASCAR in the United States. Germany's top soccer league, the Bundesliga, returned with fan-less matches last weekend. Until a vaccine or a provably effective COVID-19 treatment becomes widely available, cramming tens of thousands of potential spreaders into a single venue won't be tenable.

That will present a strange new environment for everyone involved in pro sporting events, from players to coaches to officials to broadcasters to the fans watching from home. The live audience is what turns a game into the interactive, operatic spectacle we know and love. It's right there in the description: Spectator sports. What is a spectator sport without spectators? At what point does it stop being the thing we recognize, and become an altogether different entity?

In trying to conceptualize the new sports reality, I've found myself thinking a lot about those old NBA promos - the ones that open on a shot of an empty arena before reconstructing an iconic postseason play, piece by piece, player by player. The fans are last to materialize, and the moment feels incomplete until that final addition. Then the whole scene vanishes as quickly as it appeared, leaving only the empty gym once again.

I always found something haunting about the idea of these incredible, historic moments taking place against a silent backdrop of vacant seats. It felt like a brief glimpse into an alternate reality in which we'd decided not to imbue sports with meaning. There's a reason LeBron James initially reacted to the prospect of playing in empty arenas by dismissing it out of hand.

Those ads probably wouldn't feel out of place if they ran tomorrow. They speak simultaneously to what we're currently missing, and what we'll be gaining - and yet still lacking - when sports return.

It's not impossible to imagine what sports without fans will look or sound like. The difficult thing will be trying to reconcile the idea of a sporting event that looks and sounds like a scrimmage with one that ostensibly carries monumental stakes. Will those stakes resonate in the same way for the players or their homebound fans? Can players perform at the same level without a crowd there to pump them full of adrenaline? If a three falls and there's nobody there to cheer it ...

History provides us with some examples. The one most people might remember is the Orioles-White Sox game that was played in an empty Camden Yards in Baltimore just over five years ago, while protests raged throughout the city in the wake of Freddie Gray's death in police custody.

The players who participated in that game talked about the eeriness of the quiet. They were put off not only by the lack of reaction to big plays, but also by the absence of the ambient noise that had unconsciously become a staple of their experience.

"It's the same as waking up having coffee every day for five years and then waking up and having zero coffee, and kind of being dependent on that energy," then-Orioles catcher Caleb Joseph told The Athletic's Kaitlyn McGrath. "And then out of nowhere it's gone."

Back in 1989, Siena and Boston University played the North Atlantic Conference championship game in an empty arena because of a measles outbreak on Siena's campus.

"It was definitely an adjustment," Siena forward Tom Huerter told The Times Union's Mark Singelais of the game, which Siena won by one point to punch its ticket to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history. "I think the best description is it felt like playing in a preseason scrimmage, against a really good team."

We can also now draw on examples from our present-day situation.

The WWE - which was deemed an essential business by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis - has been taping matches in empty venues for weeks. The fan-less experience is particularly strange for pro wrestling, which is by definition more performative and more of a pure entertainment product than non-scripted spectator sports. When theatricality is the whole point, what are you supposed to do when the theater's empty?

With the performance greeted by silence, both the physical and dramatic components of the sport are rendered bizarre. The performers still play to a nonexistent crowd, complete with over-the-top walk-out introductions and pregnant pauses in dialogue for effect. It's like a dress rehearsal for a hammy stage production.

"You know they're there watching at home, and that's what you have to try and focus on," wrestler Adam Joseph Copeland, aka Edge, said on WWE's "After the Bell" podcast. "The performance for the people at home that are hopefully reacting the way that you would want them to within the arena."

The Korean Baseball Organization began its season last week against a similarly silent backdrop. Umpires and coaches wear protective masks, while cheerleaders and mascots dance in front of empty seats. In Incheon, the SK Wyverns tried to create the illusion of a home crowd by filling the outfield bleachers with rows of banners displaying fans wearing the team's hat. As if to add an element of realism, the fake fans are also depicted wearing protective face masks.

There are still a lot of practical questions to answer about how the games will be packaged when team sports return in North America.

Will they be played in smaller, more intimate facilities? That might take some of the strangeness out of the endeavor; the sounds of the game would otherwise echo through cavernous, empty stadiums and serve only to emphasize the quiet of the place. Other sports may borrow the KBO's cardboard-fan idea. Perhaps some will take it a step further and stage games in front of a green screen so broadcasts can show a digitized live audience.

Another unknown is whether arenas will still feature the work of game-ops staff. Will they pump in artificial crowd noise or music during the run of play? Without any of that, viewers are likely going to hear a lot of stuff they aren't used to hearing, from the otherwise obscured sounds of the game to things said in the heat of the moment: sideline play-calling, profane trash talk, and heated arguments with officials.

Maybe the participants will tone down their usual mouthiness. Or maybe they won't. Steph Curry suggested that games without background noise "might be something that's really appealing from a fan perspective, to get real up close and personal with what we do on the court."

Orioles and White Sox players and coaches said they could hear everything the other team was saying, on the field and in the dugout, be it cheering or heckling or strategizing. Hearing a coach bellowing instruction from the bench won't be a novel phenomenon to anyone who's ever watched a Tom Thibodeau-coached team play, but there's a different level of tactical transparency in a silent stadium. On the playing field or in the huddle during a timeout, teams will have to go to greater lengths to conceal their intentions. Baseball players holding their gloves in front of their mouths to discourage lip-reading won't be enough.

"I had to change my coaching style because I was kind of an emotive guy," former Siena coach Mike Deane told Singelais. "If there's nobody in the gym, and no noise to filter that, you've got to be a little different."

As for the broadcast, will commentators be on site or off? If it's the former, I can tell you - as someone who used to call Atlantic University Sport basketball games for Dalhousie campus radio in Halifax, Nova Scotia - that it's a strange, self-conscious feeling to be describing the scene on display in a quiet gym where all of the players and attendants can hear you. The players, meanwhile, have to try to focus on playing while essentially having their actions narrated back to them in real time.

"When I went in to pitch, I just heard (Orioles play-by-play announcer) Gary Thorne the whole time I was in my delivery," former Orioles closer Zack Britton told The Athletic's Dan Connolly and Dan Hayes of his relief appearance in empty Camden Yards. "I'd get my pitch (signal) and I could hear him say, 'Britton's coming set. And the pitch.' I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, Gary, can I just mute you right now? Because I hear everything you're saying.'"

Not all athletes have found that to be problematic, though. In fact, two fighters in UFC 249 earlier in May said they won their bouts in part because they overheard and heeded tactical suggestions from fighter-turned-broadcaster Daniel Cormier.

If the NBA and NHL return in the near future, they'll either jump directly to the playoffs or be in the midst of the home stretch of the regular season, with some playoff positions still to be decided. If MLB returns, chances are it will play in empty stadiums. That Orioles-White Sox game was just one early-season game out of 162. How will it feel to play in or watch a fan-less game to decide a playoff spot, or a series, or a championship? How do you generate the requisite level of intensity and tension for a contest of that magnitude without a crowd?

We often reference "playoff atmosphere," which connotes a particular energy in a venue that is equal parts sound and texture. When we think of memorable postseason games we think of crowds so loud that players and coaches can't properly communicate. People who dream of being pro athletes dream of performing miraculous physical feats in front of thousands of roaring fans. Imaginary plays pantomimed in the driveway or the backyard are customarily followed by, "And the crowd goes wild!"

There won't be any substitute for the goosebump-inducing thrill of a momentum-swinging run or a game-breaking play in front of a frenzied home crowd; the murmuring angst between pitches during a crucial, drawn-out at-bat; the roar after a successful penalty kill; the swelling sound as a visiting team lines up for a third down; the anticipatory hum as a play develops into a breakaway or an open 3-pointer; the cathartic explosion after a frantic sequence of events is punctuated by a goal or a dunk or a tape-measure home run. The gravity of these moments is communicated, in large part, by a crowd's reaction to them.

Maybe the biggest question in all this is one that has nothing to do with practicality and everything to do with emotional gratification. The special thing about sports spectatorship is that it's interactive; you feel like you have a role to play in the production, however small. That feeling may not persist when the interactive element is taken away.

And what about the communal element? A common refrain about the power of sports is that they bring people together. That's often meant figuratively, but there is, of course, a literal component as well, whether that means populating stadiums or going to friends' houses or packing into sweaty bars to take in the spectacle and react among fellow fans.

Will it feel the same to root for a local team if that team isn't even playing in the local market? Can a fan base collectively celebrate a victory if its members can't celebrate with each other in person? Can sports still bring people together on a spiritual level if they can't do so on a physical level?

And if not, then what, exactly, is left?

Joe Wolfond writes about basketball and tennis for theScore.

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The NHL and the players' union are working on a 24-team playoff setup based on conference standings, sources told Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman.

Friedman noted that nothing is set in stone and that both teams and players must still approve it. He added that discussions on the proposal could happen as early as Thursday.

Friedman admitted he's not certain of every detail, but said he has an idea of how it would work: The top four seeds (based on points percentage) in each conference would receive byes through the play-in but participate in a three-game tournament to serve as a tune-up.

The rest of the playoffs would be "bracketed." In each conference, the No. 5 seed faces the No. 12 seed (winner plays No. 4), No. 6 faces No. 11 (winner plays No. 3), No. 7 faces No. 10 (winner plays No. 2), and No. 8 faces No. 9 (winner plays No. 1).

The play-in series would be a best-of-five, and the rest of the postseason would be best-of-seven series.

Here's a look at the current standings based on points percentage:

Eastern Conference

Western Conference

Another major change in this format would be the lack of reseeding. For example, if a No. 10, 11, or 12 seed managed to pull off an upset in the Eastern Conference play-in, the higher-ranked winner of Toronto and Columbus would still play Boston next.

This conference-based format would erase the NHL's much-maligned divisional playoff system - at least for one season.

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Winnipeg Jets captain Blake Wheeler believes a 24-team playoff format could offer bubble teams a leg up on the competition.

"I think what you need to be really conscientious of in this situation is that there are some teams that've had incredible regular seasons and you don't want to handicap them as well," Wheeler said on Wednesday's edition of "Dreger Cafe."

"I think the hard thing would be to have the bubble teams play a play-in and all of the sudden now Boston or St. Louis or Colorado who've been at the top of the standings all year, they're sitting there cold and have to play a team that's already played a three-to-five game series and they're coming in hot."

The NHL and NHLPA are reportedly making progress toward a 24-team playoff format. The expanded bracket would see clubs like the Montreal Canadiens and Chicago Blackhawks - who had an outside chance of making the playoffs when the season was suspended March 12 - included in the postseason.

Wheeler's Jets currently occupy the first Western Conference wild-card spot but have played two more games than the three teams directly below them and would potentially be involved in the play-in.

The veteran winger added that he isn't against the idea of an expanded playoff field but believes there must be meaningful games for all teams beforehand.

"When I say the games matter, I'm talking about do-or-die situations come up so that the players are in somewhat decent shape and so that the competitive balance is intact," Wheeler said.

Meanwhile, Nashville Predators forward Matt Duchene said Tuesday that he'd like to see the playoffs carried out in a more traditional fashion to avoid a "COVID Cup," where fans and pundits may place an asterisk beside the champion.

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The coronavirus has cost Taylor Hall and other pending unrestricted free agents money this summer.

Before the pandemic hit, the NHL salary cap was projected to rise to somewhere between $84 million and $88.2 million for next season. Now, with the campaign on pause, the 2020-21 cap ceiling is unlikely to rise above the current $81.5 million.

Despite this, Hall doesn't plan on signing a one-year contract in order to get a bigger long-term payday a year from now, according to Arizona Coyotes head coach Rick Tocchet.

"You're talking about a guy who, before this, was going to make a ton of money," Tocchet said on the "ESPN On Ice" podcast, according to ESPN's Greg Wyshynski. "With this whole pandemic, like he told me, he doesn't want to go through another year trying to play on a one-year contract. He wants to get settled somewhere. So, he's got a lot of different options that he's gotta weigh."

Where Hall chooses to spend the next chapter of his career remains to be seen, but Tocchet believes the Coyotes have a strong chance.

"I'm not saying he is going to sign here, but I definitely think we're a team he's very interested in staying with," Tocchet said.

General manager John Chayka would have to get creative to keep Hall in Arizona. The Coyotes already have $79.9 million committed to their payroll for next season, according to CapFriendly. Multiple players would likely have to be traded in order for the team to afford Hall.

The former Hart Trophy winner was traded from the New Jersey Devils to Arizona in January. He's totaled 52 points in 65 games this season between the two clubs.

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