How teams qualify
The top three teams in each division qualify automatically, and two further wild-card places per conference go to the best remaining records. The bracket is then built largely within divisions, so first-round series are often between clubs that have already played each other several times during the season.
That is a deliberate design choice favouring rivalry over strict seeding. It produces first-round series with genuine history and occasionally means two of the conference's best teams meet far earlier than their records would suggest.
Because the standings use a points system rather than a simple win count, qualification can turn on results that were not wins at all. A team that loses repeatedly in overtime collects points along the way and can edge out a team with a similar record and worse luck in the closing minutes.
Four rounds, sixteen wins
Every round is a best-of-seven series, so a champion must win sixteen games across roughly two months. It is the longest and most physically punishing postseason in major team sport, and teams routinely finish it with players who have been carrying injuries for weeks.
Home advantage follows the same 2-2-1-1-1 pattern used elsewhere and is worth less in hockey than in most sports, partly because the last-change advantage matters more than the crowd. Road wins are common enough that a series is rarely considered settled after two games.
Depth decides these series more than star power. With four lines rotating through a compressed schedule, a team whose third and fourth lines can hold their own gains an advantage that compounds across seven games.
Overtime, and why it is different
Regular-season overtime is played with fewer skaters and ends in a shootout if nobody scores. None of that applies in the playoffs. Overtime is full strength, sudden death, and repeats as a full period as many times as necessary.
The result is a form of the sport that has no equivalent elsewhere: games that can last the length of two, with every shift a potential ending, played by athletes far beyond normal fatigue. Multiple-overtime games are the ones that enter the sport's folklore.
It also removes the shootout's artificiality from the moment it matters most. A playoff series is decided entirely by hockey played as hockey, which is the strongest argument the format has in its favour.