The Florida Panthers will be part of a qualifying round best-of-five series to compete in the Stanley Cup Playoffs should the National Hockey League begin play again. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announced on Tuesday that it was officially approved by the NHL Board of Governors and the NHL Players Association. The remaining last three weeks of the NHL regular season was eliminated.
There was no announcement on when or where the qualifying round of the playoffs will be held. Two hub cities would host the entire playoff schedule, which will likely be one hub city per conference. It would prevent travel restrictions along with an accessible safe area to conduct games for the players.
Both conferences would have 12 teams instead of eight teams represented for the upcoming 2019-20 postseason. The seedings of each conference would be based on winning percentages during the season.
There will be five rounds of postseason play instead of the usual four rounds which has been used since the 1974-75 season. The top four seeds in each conference would receive a bye in the first round and play in round-robin contests. The next eight seeds of each conference will play in a best-of-five series in the qualifying round.
The Florida Panthers ended up with the 10th seed in the Eastern Conference. They will face the seventh seed New York Islanders in a qualifying round. The winner of the series would challenge one of the top four Eastern Conference seeds in the first round.
The Panthers have made the playoffs five different times during their franchise history prior to this season. They appeared in the postseason back in 1996, 1997, 2000, 2012 and 2016. The club has not won a playoff series since 1996 season. Florida last made the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2016 and fell to the Islanders in six games during a first-round series.
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