Have the East and West play more than twice a year. I guess that would be 3 times a year. That's 87 games. Not going to happen. There's no way out of the unbalanced season and therefore the playoffs are unbalanced as well.
Revisiting the Broken Playoff Format
- Thread starter seancolorado
- Start date
The current system also suffers from this, but in a different way. The most obvious scenario would be if the fifth place team in one division had a better record than the third place team from the other division in the same conference; in such a case the second place team in the weaker division would have a weaker opponent then either of the division winners in that conference. (And at one point this season it was actually looking like a possibility, until the Rangers and Capitals went on a tear while Toronto fell off the face of the earth.)
The 1 vs 8 based seeding worked well when there were only two divisions in each conference. Even with the division winners being guaranteed the top two seeds in their conference. (Meanwhile the NBA has the three division winners plus the next best team getting the top four seeds so as to avoid having the 6th seeded team getting an easier first round match-up than the 5th seeded team - and home court advantage is based on record, not seeding.)
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Agree...new format is stupid...was simple before...why fix something that didn't need to be fixed?
KingsFan7824
Registered User
Because it wasn't simple. It was one of the major reasons Detroit, Columbus, and Toronto wanted out of the West. It's why Dallas and Minnesota wanted something that made more sense for them. It's why divisional playoffs in the 80's existed in the first place. Nobody wants to travel all the way to the west coast. Certainly not eastern time zone teams, and even central time zone teams are kicking themselves for being so lucky.
Everything is easy in the East. You can set it up any which way, and it pretty much makes sense. All one time zone. Home games are at 7pm, most road games are at the same 7pm.
I do. The NFC south was crap. Not one team deserved to make it. Like Carolina. A 7-9 team does not belong in the playoffs. Could happen in Hockey.
NFL has four divisions on each conference, NHL only has two each. A division winner in the NHL would ALWAYS deserve to be there.
I'm not following your comment...right now there are teams in the east and teams in the west so,it is geographically set up so why doesn't 1 vs 8 etc work?
Not reseeding once the first round is stupid...all it is doing is forcing a division rivalry that people will get sick of...I like the thought of keeping it wide open and I think playoffs can start good rivalries...not force them
Hate the new format...
Unfortunately there may be a team or two that makes it that might have worse records than other teams that make it based on this format, but there will be at least 4 that make it based on their records through wildcard. Division winners will almost always have good records. If there's a Pacific division for example you may very well see L.A, San Jose, Anaheim and Vancouver all make the playoffs based on their regular season records. Plus if they add another Canadian team through relocation or expansion there could be one Canadian team in every division.
talkinaway
Registered User
I don't mind this format. There are quite a few good reasons for it:
1) Rivalry. As a Bruins fan, the thought of a Bruins/Habs playoff matchup makes me salivate like Pavlov's pup. (Confession: It also scares the living crap out of me, because Rask hasn't figured out the Habs yet.)
2) Playoff brackets for fans. The post-season starts in mid-April, probably April 15. March Madness ends on April 6. Making the bracket fixed as opposed to the mobile bracket system will make more people pay attention to the first and second round games. Office betting pools don't really work with mobile brackets (even if the mobile bracket system made sense for how the seeds were determined).
3) Time zones. I can't speak much on this, since all the EC teams are in the same time zone. But it must be nice for people in California to not have to rush home to catch a 7 PM Central, 5 PM Pacific game against in Chicago.
4) Parity. Teams in the same division have nearly the same schedule - offhand, I know in the East the only real difference is 2 extra intradivisional games and how the third interdivisional game is split home/away.
I know when a team with fewer points gets in (or gets a better matchup), it sucks. But that's going to happen in most systems, unless you do something silly like have sportswriters judge the teams' performance like they do for college games - and in that case, you'd have endless outcry over teams that were snubbed, downseeded, or upseeded.
The real thing that's broken is the shootout. Forget the playoff format; it's not that bad. The AHL has reduced shootouts to about 6% of games - let's see the NHL get it down from about 15%.
1) Rivalry. As a Bruins fan, the thought of a Bruins/Habs playoff matchup makes me salivate like Pavlov's pup. (Confession: It also scares the living crap out of me, because Rask hasn't figured out the Habs yet.)
2) Playoff brackets for fans. The post-season starts in mid-April, probably April 15. March Madness ends on April 6. Making the bracket fixed as opposed to the mobile bracket system will make more people pay attention to the first and second round games. Office betting pools don't really work with mobile brackets (even if the mobile bracket system made sense for how the seeds were determined).
3) Time zones. I can't speak much on this, since all the EC teams are in the same time zone. But it must be nice for people in California to not have to rush home to catch a 7 PM Central, 5 PM Pacific game against in Chicago.
4) Parity. Teams in the same division have nearly the same schedule - offhand, I know in the East the only real difference is 2 extra intradivisional games and how the third interdivisional game is split home/away.
I know when a team with fewer points gets in (or gets a better matchup), it sucks. But that's going to happen in most systems, unless you do something silly like have sportswriters judge the teams' performance like they do for college games - and in that case, you'd have endless outcry over teams that were snubbed, downseeded, or upseeded.
The real thing that's broken is the shootout. Forget the playoff format; it's not that bad. The AHL has reduced shootouts to about 6% of games - let's see the NHL get it down from about 15%.
Something being "broken" implies it doesn't work at all, whatsoever. So it obviously isn't "broken".
No matter what, as long as you give guaranteed spots to divisional placements there will be flaws with the system. It happened with the old system with the divisional winner occupying the first three seeds and it happens with this one with the top three from each division being guaranteed spots.
So you're left with either taking away all importance to divisional competition by not guaranteeing spots based on it if you want it to be more fair. Which people would then complain about unjustly instead of this.
So, basically, just deal with it. The whole spirit of competition is that the best rise to the top so if a team gets slightly cheated on seeding on occasion so be it, maybe they should have won a bit more and maybe they should prove it in the playoffs that they deserve to go far.
No matter what, as long as you give guaranteed spots to divisional placements there will be flaws with the system. It happened with the old system with the divisional winner occupying the first three seeds and it happens with this one with the top three from each division being guaranteed spots.
So you're left with either taking away all importance to divisional competition by not guaranteeing spots based on it if you want it to be more fair. Which people would then complain about unjustly instead of this.
So, basically, just deal with it. The whole spirit of competition is that the best rise to the top so if a team gets slightly cheated on seeding on occasion so be it, maybe they should have won a bit more and maybe they should prove it in the playoffs that they deserve to go far.
PatriceBergeron
Registered User
It's only in the 2nd year and I'm already sick of it. I absolutely hate the idea that we will most likely be playing the same teams every single year. It makes the regular season so much less exciting. There's going to be years where I'm rooting for the Bruins to get a wildcard just so I can see some new teams in the playoffs.
