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With the absorption of four teams from the World Hockey Association in the 1979–80 season, a new playoff system was introduced where 16 of the league's 21 teams qualified for postseason play. The four division winners qualified for the playoffs while twelve wild-card positions rounded out the sixteen teams.
4 The Montreal Canadiens only missed the playoffs once – by a tie-breaker – in the 46 seasons from 1948–49 to 1993–94. In the 1969–70 season, they tied for fourth and last playoff spot with the New York Rangers, but were eliminated on total goals scored tiebreak (they scored 244 goals to New York's 246).
A postseason appearance drought is continued by not making the NHL playoffs after the regular season. Since the first round of the playoffs normally consists of eight series (sixteen teams) and there were thirty-two active teams in the NHL during the 2023–24 season, there are sixteen teams that did not make the most recent playoffs on this list.
The standings haven't treated them that way. They are still multiple wins behind the last playoff spot in the Western Conference, and they'll need to leap a handful of teams to get there.
Ten teams qualify for the playoffs: the top six teams in the regular season have a bye to the quarterfinals, while teams ranked seventh to tenth meet each other (7 versus 10, 8 versus 9) in a preliminary playoff round.
The tournament includes all eleven teams in the conference, with teams ranked according to their finish in the conference standings. Seeds 1–5 earn a bye into the quarterfinal round, while seeds 6–11 play to determine the remaining quarterfinalists. Winners in the opening round are reseeded and advanced to play top three seeds in reverse order.
In the regular season, which generally runs from early October through early April, teams play 82 games which determine their standings. The three highest-placed teams in each division and two wild card teams per conference enter the playoff elimination tournament to determine the Stanley Cup champion.
The 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs was the playoff tournament of the National Hockey League (NHL) for the 2020–21 season.The playoffs began on May 15, 2021, and concluded on July 7, 2021, with the Tampa Bay Lightning winning their second consecutive and third overall Stanley Cup in franchise history, defeating the Montreal Canadiens four games to one in the Stanley Cup Finals.