The sporting world is dealing with an unprecedented turn of events at the moment, and no sport is safe. Leagues have been canceled, games have been postponed, and training sessions are no longer what they used to be. Changes are also occurring within the NHL, and the season has been on pause since mid-March due to the ongoing pandemic. However, it seems as though a new way of playing could be on the cards, and it seems as though the NHL is debating whether a 24-team playoff could be the way forward. Here’s what it would look like…

The Four Main Cities

To begin with, it seems as though the NHL would assign four main league cities to act as the hosts for division-based playoff tournaments. At the moment, it’s believed that these four cities would be across both the United States and Canada.

Assigning the Teams

Then, each of the four divisions within the NHL would be assigned a hub that would come in the form of one of those league cities. The top six teams within this division would then qualify for the postseason and report to the hub that they have been assigned.

Playing Them Out

When the hubs and the divisions are assigned, the number one and number two seeds would play against each other, and the same for the number three and the number six seeds, and also for the number four and number five seeds. The games would be a best-of-three series, and the winners would bag the right to continue playing.

The Playoff Tournament

As this comes to an end, there should be just four remaining qualifiers left within each division. Therefore, 16 playoff teams altogether. A seeding structure would then be put in place to ensure that these games could go ahead as a playoff tournament.

Yes, big changes may be coming to the NHL.

On September 6, 2021, Arthur Ashe Stadium saw the celebration of two of Great Britain’s finest women tennis players. One is 76-year-old legend Virginia Wade, the last British woman to win a Grand Slam championship. The other is an 18-year-old phenomenon, Emma Raducanu who would later become just the second U.S. Open debutante to win the tournament, after Canadian tennis player Bianca Andreescu.

Virginia Wade Knew Her Compatriot Would Win the Tournament

After eliminating Shelby Rogers in the fourth round, a star-struck Raducanu waved at Wade during her on-court interview and shared that she’s an absolute legend and that she was honored to have her at her game. After the interview, the British teenager ran up the Presidential Suite to thank Wade for her support.

Emma Raducanu ended up winning the U.S. Open after defeating Belinda Bencic, Maria Sakkari, and Leylah Fernandez in the quarterfinals, semifinals, and final respectively. She won the tournament without dropping a single set, which caught many pundits by surprise. She also proved Wade’s prognosis of her winning the tournament to be correct.

Emma Raducanu Has Two Idols

Raducanu started playing tennis at the age of five and modeled her game after two athletes from her parents’ countries – China’s Li Na and Romania’s Simona Halep. She wanted the aggressive strokes of the former and the smooth movement of the latter. Raducanu also appreciates Na’s mentality because she never complained about anything.

The British teen had her breakthrough season during the 2018 junior circuit when she reached the quarterfinals at both the U.S. Open Juniors and the Wimbledon Juniors. In that year, she also reached a career-high ranking of No. 20.

Before the 2021 U.S. Open, the biggest stories around the tournament were the withdrawals of Serena Williams, Roger Federer, and Rafael Nadal. After the tournament, the media cannot stop talking about Emma Raducanu and her amazing achievement.