If / when the National Hockey League returns next month, 16 of the remaining 24 teams will be pitched into the Stanley Cup Qualifiers, a playoff round invented due to the sudden end to the 2019-20 regular season.
The Stanley Cup Qualifiers are basically intended to simulate the rest of the season. The qualifying round pits the bottom four playoff teams in each conference against the top four non-playoff teams in a better three-out-of-five series with each winner advancing to face the conference’s top four teams. Those four teams will play their own round-robin tournament to determine their seed at 1-4.
With a new format comes an opportunity for new logos, and yes, the NHL now has a number of logos specifically for this situation.
All logos follow the same format of the existing Stanley Cup 2020 playoffs and the logos of the 2020 Stanley Cup Final with the last word exchanged for “Qualifiers.” The NHL has used this same style of logo for its playoffs since 2013. In French, the new round is known as the Coupe Stanley 2020 Ronde de Qualification, which is reflected in that logo.
Each of the eight NHL Stanley Cup Qualifiers 2020 matchups will also have their own specific matchup logo, this again follows the same format as the usual Stanley Cup Playoffs and final matchup “logos”.
A date has not yet been set for the start of the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs, however, it is speculated that things could start in the last week of July. The league has set July 10 as a target date to open the team’s training grounds.
Check out the history of the Stanley Cup Finals and Stanley Cup Finals logos here
