“This stop, Willoughby.” 

For as weird and wacky as episodes of The Twilight Zone generally were, they’ve got nothing on The NHL playoffs. This year’s postseason begins on Saturday, April 19, 2025. Most of the participating teams have been determined, although there’s still a couple fighting for spots. While we wait for those last teams to qualify and for the matchups to be set, there’s still plenty going on around The League.

New Jersey’s Paul Cotter has been suspended two games for his hit to the head of the Islanders’ Adam Pelech on Sunday afternoon. He’ll miss the Devils’ final two tune-up games against Boston and Detroit, but will, in all likelihood, be in the lineup for Game One against Carolina next weekend. The hit was a reminder that while physicality is still one of the game’s calling cards, there is a line that players need to toe. 

Of course, once the postseason gets underway, that line tends to blur and the action on the ice can break down into a free-for-all. Oftentimes, the first round of the playoffs can and does look vastly different from how the regular season is played. It’s almost as if the players get transported to The Twilight Zone. 

Crossing the river to Manhattan, news broke Monday morning that confirmed what many have speculated all season, Kenny Albert is succeeding Sam Rosen as the main television Play-by-Play broadcaster for New York Rangers games on MSG Networks. It’s both a sad day and a happy one for Rangers fans. 

On the one hand, even though they’ve had all season to say goodbye to Rosen, it’s still hard for them to let him go. On the other hand, Albert has been the team’s Radio man for years, is steeped in the team’s history courtesy of his legendary father, Marv and has been groomed for this day for years. At least Joe Micheletti is returning as the team’s primary Color Analyst, which will help fans with the transition period. 

For our next item of discussion, longtime hockey media people are once more pushing the agenda that the season starts too late, runs too long and that the playoffs should start and end earlier. Now, even league employees are getting in on the discussion, as many people feel that the regular season should start in September and end before April Fools’ Day. This would then allow the postseason to begin the first week of April and have The Stanley Cup be awarded no later than June 1st, with most preferring The Cup Final to be over by the end of May. 

Perhaps in a perfect world that could happen, but with the emphasis on having regular international events, that makes the dream of awarding The Cup by June 1st an impossibility. Taking a two-to-three-week break in February for the Olympics and a World Cup every two years makes it impossible to end the season earlier. 

Now, if you were to eliminate the international calendar, then maybe you could end the season earlier. However, you’d piss off the players to the point where all the current good-feelings that have been established between The Union and The League would disappear in the blink of an eye and that would lead to labor strife that nobody wants. 

Speaking of The Union and The League, they’ve officially begun the early stages of discussions for a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). The current CBA expires on September 15, 2026, and so far it seems like both sides are working without the open hostility that has marked previous negotiations, so we’ll call that a win. 

One major topic that seems to be on the table is the potential for expanding the season to 84 games and reducing the pre-season by two contests. In theory, from a strictly financial standpoint, that would be a win for both sides as more games mean more revenue, which means more money goes into everybody’s pockets. On the flip side, the added strain of playing two more regular-season games would surely bring with it the potential for more injuries and open the door for teams to start using load-management, like they do in The NBA. All we can say to that is HECK NO! 

So, as you can see, there’s a lot going on around The League and we haven’t even discussed the possibility that the St. Louis Blues – who reeled off a franchise-record 12-game winning streak just a few weeks ago to catapult themselves into a playoff spot – might miss the postseason if they don’t right the ship in the next couple of days. Calgary is breathing down their necks and very much has the hockey world on the edge of its seat waiting to see what will happen. 

That brings us to our last point. Instead of relying on tie-breakers like regulation wins, regulation and overtime wins and stuff like that, how about a GAME 83? If two teams are tied for a playoff spot after 82 games, just have a one-game playoff. The sheer excitement of it would captivate fans around The League and likely do big numbers across all platforms. Yes, there are logistical problems with this, but it still sounds better than using contrived tie-breakers that nobody pays attention to until it’s too late. 

Now that we’ve gotten that off our chests, “This stop, Willoughby…next stop, PLAYOFFS!”