NHL Playoffs Format Should be Scrapped
The league changed the NHL playoffs format, supposedly in the hopes of having more rival teams meet. The result has been an unmitigated disaster
Simply put, the current NHL playoffs format is the worst playoff format in all of sports. The NHL, in its infinite wisdom , has some how found the worst possible way to determine its Stanley Cup winner.
The purpose of any playoff format in any league, should be to provide the best possible set up to best determine a league champion. It is usually set up in a way that rewards a team for having a good regular season. If there is no real benefit to finishing at the top of the standings, then there is no incentive to finish with the best record possible. Teams would then decide to conserve energy and just play hard enough to get in to the playoffs. As a result, the quality of play in the regular season would decline. That is why teams finishing with the better record are rewarded by getting home ice advantage and by playing the lowest Seed in the playoffs. And in the case of the NFL, the reward is a first round bye for the top two teams in each conference. It is one of the many reasons why the NFL has the best regular season in all of sports.
In most cases the playoffs are set up to give the best teams in the league the best chance to win the championship. Cinderella stories are great but, at the same time, you don’t want to have the best teams in the league getting knocked out of the playoffs early year after year. It is better for the league when the best teams in the league wind up meeting in the later rounds of the playoffs and in the finals. A Stanley Cup final pitting two teams like Washington and Chicago will generate more interest than this year’s final of Pittsburgh vs San Jose. And the quality of play will be better because the caliber of the two teams will be better.
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Usually when a league makes a change to its playoff format, it is because of a flaw that caused lesser teams to constantly either win a championship or advance further in the playoffs than they probably should have. Two examples. In Baseball, there was a run of wildcard teams winning the World Series year after year and division winners going out early in the playoffs. One painful example of this was in 2011 when the Philadelphia Phillies won 102 games but lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Saint Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals went on win the World Series that year. MLB realized that it wasn’t good for the league that so many wildcard teams were winning the World Series instead of division winners and that it wasn’t fair that wildcard teams had as good a chance to win the World Series as a division winner did. So as a result, they changed the playoff format to give teams more incentive to win their division while also making it harder for a wildcard team to win the World Series. They added another wildcard team to the playoffs in each league and then had the wildcard teams play a one game playoff to determine who advanced to the next round while the division winners got a first round bye.
The NHL was having the same problem in the mid 80s. The first round of the playoffs was only a best of five instead of a best of seven series. The result was that a lot of the better teams in the league were getting eliminated in the first round of the playoffs because it is easier for a lesser team to win a five game series as opposed to a seven game one. One example of this being in the 1986 playoffs when the New York Rangers, who finished the regular season with a measly 62 points, knocked off the Philadelphia Flyers who had 110. So the NHL decided to increase the first round from five to seven games because the longer a series is, the harder it is for the underdog to win it. Lower Seeds still knock off higher seeds but it doesn’t happen with as much regularity as it used to. Only one eight seed, the Kings in 2012, went on to win the Stanley Cup.
Under the old NHL playoff format, the eight teams qualifying for the playoffs in each conference were seeded one through eight. In order to give teams an incentive to win their division, the three division winners were awarded the top three seeds. The five remaining teams were then seeded four through eight according to their records. The one seed would play the eight seed the two the seven so on and so forth. After each round was completed, all the teams would be re seeded. Meaning that the highest remaining seed would play the lowest remaining seed, the second highest remaining seed would play the second lowest remaining seed. The higher seed would obviously always have home ice advantage. This format gave the team in each conference with the best record the easiest path to the Stanley Cup finals because they were always assured of playing the lowest remaining seed in each round of the playoffs. This format also allowed for the two best teams in the conference to not meet until the conference finals. It was a fair, common sense format for the playoffs.
Three years ago, the NHL decided to change this format. Instead of just seeding the teams one through eight, they decided that the top three teams in each division would qualify for the playoffs and then the remaining two teams with the best record in the conference, regardless of division, would fill out the last two playoff spots as wildcard teams. The division winner with the best record would play the wildcard team with the worst record, and the division winner with the second best record would play the wildcard team with the second worst record. The second and third place teams in each division would then square off against each other. The purpose of this, says the NHL, was to create rivalries by having teams in the same division play each other. Also, after the first round, the teams are not re seeded. Everyone just stays in the same bracket. So even if you finish with the best record in the conference, you are not assured of playing the lowest remaining seed in your conference after the first round is over.
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When you look at this year’s playoffs, the Washington Capitals were in the same bracket as the Penguins and Rangers. Under the old format, the Capitals would have played Tampa in the second round because Tampa was the lowest remaining Seed to emerge from the first round. instead, with this new bracket system, Washington had to play the second best team in the whole conference and the hottest team in the NHL, the Pittsburgh Penguins, in the second round because they were in the same bracket as Pittsburgh.
Under the old format, if everything played out like it should have, Pittsburgh/Washington, the marquee match up that hockey fans wanted to see, would have been the Conference Final match up. Under this new bracket format, Pittsburgh and Washington played in the second round instead. So instead of the Conference Final pitting the two best teams in the Conference, you had a watered down Conference Final with Pittsburgh playing Tampa Bay. How the NHL can look at this playoff format and say it works is beyond belief. They say if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Well, this is broken.
The same thing happened in the West. Saint Louis and Chicago were the second and third best teams in the Western Conference. Under the old format, they would have played no earlier than the second round of the playoffs. Which makes sense because you don’t want the best teams in the conference playing each other until the later rounds of the playoffs. Under the old format, Saint Louis would have played Nashville, the seventh best team in the conference in the first round, and the Blackhawks would have played the San Jose Sharks, the sixth best team in the conference. if things went scratch, Saint Louis beats Nashville and Chicago beats San Jose, the Blackhawks and Blues play in the second round instead of the first.
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But, under this new format, with the second and third place teams in each division playing each other, the second and third best teams in the western conference played each other in the first round of the playoffs. As a result, no matter what the result was, one of the best teams in hockey was going to be out in the first round. Again, to have a team as good as the Blackhawks out in the first round doesn’t make a lot of sense. To make matters even worse, after the Blues beat the Blackhawks, instead of playing the second lowest remaining seed left in the Western Conference, they played the number one seed in the Conference, the Dallas Stars in the second round because again those two teams were in the same bracket. So you had the top two seeds in the Conference, Dallas and Saint Louis, playing in the second round of the playoffs instead of the Conference Finals. And in the other Conference semifinal you had the sixth and seventh best teams in the Conference, San Jose and Nashville facing off against each other. Compare that to what the second round match ups would have been under the old format.
Under the old format, you would have had Saint Louis and Chicago, the second and third best teams in the Conference, in one Semi Final and Dallas and Anaheim, one and four, in the other semi final. That set up would have allowed for the possibility of the two best teams in the Conference, Dallas and Saint Louis, to play in the Conference Finals instead of the second round. And once again, as a result of this new format, you had a watered down conference final with Saint Louis playing San Jose instead of Dallas.
The NHL says the change in format was done to bolster rivalries. Well lets take a look at the first round matchups in the new format as opposed to the old one. in the East, under the current format, the matchups were Capitals/Flyers, Rangers/Penguins, Red Wings/Lighting and Panthers/Islanders. In the West, Stars/Wild, Blues/Blackhawks, Ducks/Predators, and Kings/Sharks. Under the old format, East; Washington/Detroit, Penguins/Flyers, Panthers/Lighting, and Rangers/Islanders. In the West, Stars/Wild, Blues/Predators, Blackhawks/Sharks and Kings and Ducks.
So when you count how many natural rivals are playing each other under each format, under both the old and new format you have four natural rivals playing each other. So it is hard for the NHL to make the case that this new set up gives rival teams a better chance of meeting each other in the playoffs, And if anything, the matchups under the old format are more attractive than the ones under the new one. i would be willing to bet that a lot more fans would want to see the Flyers play the Penguins in the first round instead of Washington and would rather see the two New York teams square off in the first round of the playoffs instead of watching the Rangers play the Penguins. And you would also have an all Florida match up under the old format instead of the Panthers playing the Islanders in the first round. And in the West, a Kings/Ducks match up is lot more appealing because of the proximity of the two cities than a Kings/Sharks match up. And Saint Louis and Nashville are a lot closer to each other and is more of a geographical rivalry than Nashville and Anaheim.
So with everything i laid out, there isn’t one reason to stick to this new playoff format. And the NHL had to study how this format would play out in the playoffs. They had to realize that as a result of this new format, good teams would be eliminated in the early rounds of the playoffs while inferior teams would advance. So why decide to go forward with it? As is the case with everything in today’s sports world and especially when it comes to Gary Bettman, it all comes down to money.
Soon after the new playoff format was announced, the NHL introduced the Bracket Challenge to fans. It is basically the same exact thing as filling out an NCAA Basketball pool but with the 16 NHL playoff teams instead. The only way this can work is if all the teams stay in the same bracket while advancing through the playoffs. You can’t fill out a bracket if teams get re seeded after every round. So in the one bracket, you have Flyers/Washington in the other you have, Rangers/Penguins. So when a fan is filling out a bracket, if he picks the Capitals to beat the Flyers, they move in to the next bracket. In the opposite bracket, the fan picks the Penguins to beat the Rangers, so the Penguins move in to the Bracket opposite of the Capitals and that is your second round matchup. And of course if one wants to participate in the Bracket Challenge, you can but, for a small fee of course. This is the only possible explanation as to why the NHL would allow such an unbelievably flawed playoff format to exist. I have no way of proving this and nobody in the league has come out and said it but, it is the only possible explanation for it. And when you have a commissioner like Gary Bettman who is always out for the money grab, the 500 million dollars the league got for Las Vegas joining the league being another example of this, it makes it that much easier to believe that the only real reason for this change in playoff format was for money.
This is an absolute disgrace. Everyone is in this to make money. i am not going to be so naive as to think otherwise. But, when you place making money ahead of the integrity of the game, it’s disgusting. What is more important? Making a few extra bucks, or finding the best possible way of crowning a league champion? What’s amazing is that you haven’t had more of an outcry from fans of the game. I don’t know if it is a case of them not realizing what is going on or if they just don’t care. Either way, attention needs to be brought to it because it is an absolute joke of a system that desperately needs to be fixed. The Bracket Challenge can’t be making that much more extra money to warrant having such a flawed playoff system in place. Gary Bettman,for once in your tenure as commissioner, do the right thing and put the integrity of the game ahead of the almighty buck and scrap this joke of a playoff format.