It’s not often that much comes out of the NHL’s general managers’ meetings, which take place each year after the trade deadline. I don’t know that this year was much different. A couple teams raised a couple concerns (namely goalie interference and head shots), NHL commissioner Gary Bettman was there to bat them back, and off we went.
There was one quote from the commish that stood out to me, and it was about the playoff format.
This year, three of the league’s top five teams — and it could be the league’s top three by season’s end — are all in the Central Division. That means that two will have to play each other in Round 1, and two will be done by the Conference Finals.
The divisional format strikes again.
Maple Leafs fans in Toronto know well that over the Matthews-Marner era (nine seasons), the team compiled almost 900 points, which was third most in the league over that time. They trailed only Tampa Bay and Boston, two teams in their own division, meaning they often faced them in the first round before having long summers.
Here’s what Bettman had to say about why he likes this format:
“More than comfortable. It gives us a sensational first round. Probably the best playoff first round in any sport. We get more games and longer series as a result of the format. And you can always pick at certain situations in any given year and say, ‘Well, I’d like it to be different that year.’ But if you look at the body of work that our playoffs represent over time, what we have now works extraordinarily well.”
For owners like Craig Leipold in Minnesota — who has fought for years to get his Wild out of the league’s mushy middle, committed huge money to keep stars (Kirill Kaprizov) and moved other massive assets to get more skill (Quinn Hughes) — I can’t imagine he’s thrilled about the idea of “more games and longer series” as the reward for the team’s rise to prominence.
The idea is that, instead of getting more disparate matchups in 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7 and 3 vs. 6 in the conference, you’re often getting pairings like 2 vs. 3, or in the case of the Pacific, maybe 6 vs. 7.
Are we not trying to have a legitimate athletic competition here or not? Shouldn’t we respect the 82-game grind?
I know the league is on the hook to put on a show and sell tickets, but do we not want to reward the teams who have the best regular seasons by giving them the fairest chances to move on and compete for the Stanley Cup?
I hardly think a few extra first-round games from these closer matchups is worth forfeiting the integrity of the structure, which also seems short-sighted. The more top teams that move on, the better the quality of play will be by the time you get deeper into the post-season.
Would it not be worth giving up a few first-round games to achieve that? Would we not prefer to say ‘the NHL has the best playoffs’ over ‘the NHL has the best first round of playoffs?’
Instead, we often have a few of the best teams beat the hell out of each other and come limping into Round 2, only to play some team which came through an easier path and is suddenly equipped to take down the more star-laden team.
I also think it’s worth noting that while the best team often wins the Cup, perceptions and even legacies can by shaped by how deep teams get into the post-season. With 32 teams, making the final eight is something, and the final four is a feather in your cap. It’s not only important that the best team wins the Cup; we want everyone to get their fair shake to go on a run when they load up.
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That we get to these seedings after a season where we’re giving out three points in some games and two in others doesn’t feel right either. So, a quick note on all that, too: When the PHWL launched, it chose the most logical standings format of giving three points for a regulation win, two for an overtime or shootout win, one for an OT/SO loss, and none for a regulation loss.
The word is that the NHL likes the standings to be closer so that every team has a chance deep into the season, but it takes away from the possibility of a team making a late-season push without three-point regulation wins down the stretch. You can’t gain any ground right now because it feels like everyone gets points every night, and they often play to do just that.
Teams are incentivized to play for overtime, particularly when playing an out-of-conference game. The idea is ‘let’s both guarantee ourselves a point, then play for the extra one in overtime.’ Shot attempts decline in the final minutes of tied games, which highlights everyone dropping back to defend, teams dumping it in, and just playing to not get scored on.
If we gave out the third point for a regulation win, you’d have teams pushing hard at the end of tied games, fighting for that extra point. You’d be incentivizing action, rather than the obfuscation of the standings.
We’re not actively rewarding the best teams, much like with the playoff format.
I recognize that the job of the commissioner is to ensure the business of the league remains healthy, which is why he feels that this playoff format keeps more teams and fan bases engaged deeper into the season. I know he believes this version of the playoffs helps them get “more games and longer series” in the first round. But I’d like to see the league reward its best teams to maintain the highest integrity of the product all the way through the playoffs.
Often teams in a division get locked into a 2-vs.-3 matchup early (sometimes by Christmas), and so many games become a shrug — ‘what’s it matter, we know who they’re playing in the playoffs’. Going back to the old conference format allows for more games to matter, as potential matchups are constantly shifting.
The question ‘why do you not want your best teams to have the best chance to win the Stanley Cup?’ should never be answered in any other way than: ‘actually, we do.’ And if you can’t defend why the current format does that, then actually, you don’t.
Fans need to believe that every point matters, and that if you build a great team, you’ll be given a fair path to the Cup. Doing anything other than that is creating exhibitions, not competitions, and the road to the Cup is supposed to be the hardest, purest one of them all.
Hopefully, in time, the league toggles it back. After this great season, it’s Wild that the Avalanche could still fall back in the standings and be asked to Star in a 2-vs.-3 matchup in Round 1.
