The Pittsburgh Penguins finished with the NHL's second-best record, so common sense would have you believe they'd be rewarded with weaker playoff opponents given their strong regular season.
However, with the NHL's strange divisional playoff seeding, Pittsburgh had to face the NHL's fourth-best team (Columbus) in the first round, and the NHL's top-seeded team (Washington) in the second round in order to advance to the conference finals.
On the other hand, Ottawa, who finished 12th in league standings, faced the 13th-seeded Bruins in Round 1 and the ninth-seeded Rangers in Round 2, where they still somehow had home-ice advantage.
This left many people in the hockey universe hoping the NHL would revert back to it's previous format, where the conference's top seed would face the eighth seed, the second seed would face the seventh seed, and so on. It doesn't appear this will be happening, though.
"Obviously this was a unique year with a lot of strong teams in one division," said NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly, according to Chris Johnston from Sportsnet. "That doesn't happen every year and I think to pick kind of one unique year and to scrap a whole system based on that is probably a little bit short-sighted. Let's see what the future brings."
Daly was referring is the Metro Division which finished with the first-, second-, fourth-, and ninth-ranked teams in league standings.
One of those teams, the fourth-ranked Blue Jackets, got pretty shafted by facing the defending champs on the road in Round 1. It was the best season in franchise history, but they were ousted in just five games.
"I don't think it was designed for this," Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen said in March. "I don't think it was intended for this to happen."
Even players have chimed in about their opinions on the format.
"It's stupid. It's the stupidest thing ever," Capitals forward Daniel Winnik said. "It doesn't work. It doesn't make any sense."
Daly and the NHL appear to be content with their playoff seeding format, so it would likely take multiple debacles like this season in order for them to revert to the previous system.
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