After three months of cancelled games, can an NHL fan have too much of a good thing?
Imagine the Stanley Cup playoffs — arguably sport’s most grueling tournament as it now stands — being expanded from 16 teams to include 20. An extra play-in round featuring seeds 7 through 10 in each conference, likely a best-of-three or best-of-five series giving the winner home-ice disadvantage heading into their next round against a No. 1 or No. 2 seed. Conceivably a low seed could play an extra 31 or 33 games en route to a Stanley Cup Game 7.
It’s all hypothetical chatter at this point, but the talk got a little louder when Sportsnet insider Nick Kypreos sent this tweet late on New Year’s Day:
Although it hasn’t been brought up in negotiations both #NHL #NHLPA have had internal discussions on 4 more teams qualifying for playoffs
— Nick Kypreos (@RealKyper) January 2, 2013
Despite the players and owners having separately discussed such a compelling (gimmicky?) reworking of the postseason, which seemingly takes its inspiration from Major League Baseball’s ever-expanding wild card, collective bargaining talks have not touched the subject yet.
Still, it’s fun to speculate.
Sportsnet’s John Shannon said Wednesday that if such a bloated playoff bracket were to take shape, it likely would be brought in at the same time as realignment. Former general manager Doug MacLean said on Hockey Central at Noon that the notion of expanding the playoffs is not a new one and has been kicked around at the GM meetings for years.
The advantages of including two-thirds of the league in the year-ender are plain. It’s an easy sell to the fans (hey! now your .500 team has a chance to raise the Cup!) and keeps all but the most atrocious franchises in the hunt until the final week of the regular season. Even more so in a 52- or 48-game season, which is what 2012-13* is shaping up to look like.
Coming out of the last lockout, the NHL introduced the shootout to entice new and/or disgruntled fans. No doubt an expanded postseason would be sold similarly: Gary’s thank-you for waiting patiently.
The idea is, however, a veiled stab at more revenue — raked in not just through the extra playoff games themselves but through the attendance of those 12- and 13-seeded clubs in the hunt.
Upon first blush, one might say adding four teams to the mix undercuts the value of the regular season. But consider that seeds 1 through 6 would get a week to heal and rest and the lower seeds bang each other up for a chance to win it all by surviving five rounds of hard-checking hockey.
Would an eighth seed like the Los Angeles Kings have been as ready to take on the Vancouver Canucks had they had to first eliminate the Calgary Flames? Would the No. 1 seed Canucks have been knocked out so swiftly had Daniel Sedin had five more days to recover from his concussion? Just one example, but you see how this format doesn’t actually favour the middling teams that squeak in.
There is, of course, a giant downside to allowing all but 33.3 per cent of your teams into the playoffs: the weak will be rewarded.
Theoretically, this could lead to bad coaches, poor GMs and soft goaltenders keeping their jobs longer. Well, he’s got us into the playoffs three of the last four years.
Since the shootout and the loser standings point were adopted in 2005, just three teams have made the NHL playoffs while winning less than half their games: the 40-win New York Islanders in 2006-07; the 40-win Kings in 2011-12; and the 39-win Montreal Canadiens in 2009-10. It’s a smart place to draw the line. The league’s reputation is shaky at best these days.
The National Football League, which offers the optimal format of the four major North American leagues as far as balancing playoff excitement with regular-season importance, faced criticism when the 2010 Seattle Seahawks (7-9) became the first sub-.500 team to make the cut. (The division winners were given a home playoff game and defeated the New Orleans Saints, then defending Super Bowl champs.) An anomaly, sure, but a memorable one. How will the NHL look if five teams unable to win half their games are in Cup contention come April?
Under a 20-team playoff system, last season would have seen the inclusion of four teams — the Buffalo Sabres, Tampa Bay Lightning, Calgary Flames, Dallas Stars — with a combined minus-93 goal differential. The 10-seed Stars would have a realistic chance of upsetting the 7-seed Sharks after stumbling into a generous postseason on a five-game losing streak. The Lightning would be in after losing 36 games in regulation.
There’s nothing wrong with seeing Jarome Iginla and Steven Stamkos playing nationally televised games that matter. There is something unsettling about their teams not earning it, though.
Would you be in favour of the NHL expanding its playoffs to include four more teams?
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