I just want to fast forward through the regular season and get to the playoffs. I want this team to prove that they can win. Whatever they do in the regular season is not going to prove anything. So many people assume Leafs will lose in the first round again. To me, this season is all about the playoffs. Sure, it's going to be fun to see our guys rack up a bunch of points but without playoff success it will be all hollow. Even if they win the President's trophy but lose in the first round, it will not be seen as a successful season by me. How much stock do you put in the regular season this year vs the playoffs?
After the last season, I really soured on the league for a few reasons.
1. The sport is refereed completely differently in regular season vs playoffs, to the point where you question why there's even rules anymore. There is also a serious double standard in reffing, as we saw the numerous disgusting things that Boston got away with, yet Kadri gets suspended for an entire series for doing less. Chara f***ing sucker punched Tavares and didn't even receive a motherf***ing penalty.
2. This league seems to reward boring grindfest styles. This year's finals were one of the worst I've ever seen. People want to watch the best of the best go at it; NBA finals do extremely well because generally speaking you'll see the absolute best in the game face off, like LeBron vs Curry or Kawhi etc. With the NHL grinders and role players get glorified in the playoffs as they have free reign to take liberties on star players and slow the game to a crawl. I enjoyed watching Boston shit the bed in game 7, that was about it.
3. The hard cap has made free agency boring, punishes teams for being good at drafting and developing, and has also resulted in less exciting trades, and has created too much parity . NBA manages to be relevant year round because they have crazy free agency and player movement so fans are talking about teams and players the entire year and are always excited.
4. Regular season performance, outside of securing a playoff spot, seems to be meaningless now. Tampa Bay set a record, then proceeded to get swept in the first round of the playoffs. Maybe it was funny and exciting in the moment but overall it's not a good look for the league. There's too many games to care about regular season anymore.
In addition, the playoff format is awful and doesn't give a huge incentive for a better regular season record. Stacked divisions suffer more and we get lopsided matchups deep in the playoffs like Boston sweeping the Hurricanes.
I don't give a f*** about this regular season and I'll be tuning in far less this year. I'll enjoy the Saturday night games as it's a classic past time but I don't see the need to devote a lot of time on weeknights only to see this team lose in the first round again.
The NHL has a lot to fix as far its product goes, and this isn't even touching the marketing aspect where they also fail miserably.