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Which NHL teams will advance in the new qualifying round of the playoffs? Patrick Sharp weighs in.

"You can't eliminate teams who are out on points percentage or stuff like that," Giordano said. "I think you go 12 and 12. More teams get in this year, maybe a couple of byes at the top and play it out."

The top four teams in the Eastern and Western Conferences get byes into the final 16 except for a handful of round-robin games to determine seeding. That's Boston, Tampa Bay, Washington and Philadelphia in the East and St. Louis, Colorado, Vegas and Dallas in the West.

“It rewards those teams that had a good regular season, and it’s going to serve as almost a little bit of a preseason for those top four in each conference,” said NBC Sports analyst Patrick Sharp, who won the Cup three times as a player with the Chicago Blackhawks.