Currently in 6 even divisions. With wild card spots.
Next year in 4 uneven conferences. With possibly no wild-card spots?
So half the teams will have a 50% chance of making the playoffs.
And the other half will have a 57% chance.
Okay, so I understand that it sucks to have teams like Columbus and Detroit playing a bunch of games on the West coast throughout the regular season. I don't have a beef with the schedule, though it does take rivalries like Avs-Red Wings down to 2 games a year (ie, Detroit plays only once in Denver.) Applies to Blackhawks-Canucks, Bruins-Flyers, etc.
But what is unacceptable is having unequal chances to make the playoffs. How to fix this?
Plans
Plan 0: The old system
Plan A: As proposed, top four from each conference
Plan B: Top three from each conference, with four wild cards - divisional playoffs
Plan C: Put a 7-team conference and an 8-team conference on one side of the bracket, top two from each conference, four wild-cards
Plan D: Contract two teams, get down to 7 teams in each conference and do the top four just fine.
Personally, I like wild-cards as it keeps interest in playoff races. Anyways, let's compare plans 0-C using last years records. I know that Plan D would work, but contracting two teams is it's own ball of wax.
Plan 0
Notes: The Rangers had the 18th best record but made the playoffs over Dallas and Calgary because the West was stronger this year.
Plan A
Conference A
1 Vancouver
4 Phoenix
2 San Jose
3 Anaheim
Conference B
1 Detroit
4 Dallas
2 Nashville
3 Chicago
Conference C
1 Boston
4 Buffalo
2 Tampa
3 Montreal
Conference D
1 Washington
4 NY Rangers
2 Philadelphia
3 Pittsburgh
Notes: Changes from Plan 0--LA with 98 points misses the playoffs, Dallas with 95 points makes them. All divisional playoffs for the first two rounds, every year.
Plan B
Conference A
1 Vancouver
4 Dallas (wild-card: Vancouver was #1 division winner, so they get Dallas the #4 wild-card)
2 San Jose
3 Anaheim
Conference B
1 Detroit
4 Los Angeles (wild-card: Detroit was #3 division winner, so they get LA the #2 wild-card)
2 Nashville
3 Chicago
Conference C
1 Boston
4 Phoenix (wild-card: Boston was #4 division winner, so they get Phoenix the #1 wild-card)
2 Tampa
3 Montreal
Conference D
1 Washington
4 Buffalo (wild-card: Washington was #2 division winner, so they get Buffalo the #3 wild-card)
2 Philadelphia
3 Pittsburgh
Notes: Top 16 teams in NHL made playoffs, even better than Plan 0. While fair, this creates playoffs that aren't close in travel.
Plan C
This is a pain in the ass only because they put the two 7-team conferences on the east coast. If Columbus was in Conference D (green on the map) it would be pretty simple.
I'll do it both ways to see what I mean.
Plan C.1
Conference A + D Bracket
1 Vancouver
8 Los Angeles
2 Washington
7 Phoenix
3 Philadelphia
6 Anaheim
4 Pittsburgh
5 San Jose
Conference B + C Bracket
1 Detroit
8 Dallas
2 Boston
7 Buffalo
3 Tampa
6 Montreal
4 Nashville
5 Chicago
As you can see the B/C bracket is easy. The A/D bracket sucks, east-west travel all over.
But if we swap Columbus to conference D...
Plan C.2
Conference A + B Bracket (West)
1 Vancouver
8 Chicago
2 San Jose
7 LA
3 Detroit
6 Phoenix
4 Anaheim
5 Nashville
Conference C + D Bracket
1 Washington
8 NY Rangers
2 Philly
7 Buffalo
3 Pitt
6 Montreal
4 Boston
5 Tampa
Would you look at that, it's virtually identical to Plan 0. We still don't get the top 16 teams in the league, but the travel is fine. It's the easy way to fix the regular season travel without affecting the playoffs.
Conclusion
Plan 0: Has worked well for the playoffs. But it's going away.
Plan A: Unfair percentage wise. Negatively impacted 1 team in 2011. Could be fixed with a tweak that says a 5th place team in an 8-team C could take the spot of a 4th place team in a 7-team C. In this example, LA would have taken the Rangers spot to play Washington. But then that makes Washington one of the only teams travelling far and they had the 2nd best record.
Plan B: I prefer it to Plan A. I think the wild-card races create more interesting games in the last two months of the regular season, which is always important. And I don't mind forcing teams to travel in the playoffs, if it's been helped in the regular season. At least we get the top 16 teams in the NHL.
Plan C:
C.1 sucks.
C.2 is pretty darn good. Requires flipping a team like Columbus (though they are in the Eastern time zone and are relatively new, so I don't see the big deal) to an Eastern division. Fixes regular season travel and keeps the playoffs as they have been. Edit: It would also work to move Phoenix to Quebec and put them in Conference C.
Plan D:
Would be sweet. But isn't on the table right now.
Post Script
Plan A vs Plan 0 in modern history...
How unfair is Plan A? Since this is the proposed plan, I think it warrants a larger investigation.
Plan A in 2010
Colorado, with the 12th best record gets bumped for St. Louis at 15. Philly and Montreal still get in at 18 and 19.
Plan A in 2009
Carolina and the Rangers get bumped with the 11th and 12th best records for Florida and Buffalo at 14 and 18. Interestingly, Carolina and Rangers were teams 5 and 6 in a 7-team conference. So this isn't a product of 7 teams vs 8, this is just what happens because conferences are never perfectly balanced.
Plan A in 2008
Another strong year for 7-team conference D. Washington at #12 gets bumped for #20 Chicago in an 8-team conference.
Plan A in 2007
Here the Thrashers with the 12th best record get bumped for Toronto at 18. This was the case of a 5th team in an 8-team conf vs a 4th team.
Verdict on Plan A
In the last 5 seasons, 6 teams that made the playoffs would not have under the proposed new rules. All 6 would have been replaced with teams with worse records, as would always be the case.
Conferences with teams negatively affected
D: 3 times
A: 2 times
B: 1 time
Conferences with teams positively affected
C: 3 times
B: 3 times
In case you forgot, A & B have 8 teams. C & D have 7 teams. At least for the last five years, it's more about who's in your conference than how many teams. If you're in conference B or C, you should be pretty happy that 4 of your teams are getting in the playoffs. D or A, not so much.
Every year the 12th best team in the NHL doesn't make the playoffs. But it's plausible for Bettman to argue that the increased rivalries and decreased travel is worth that tradeoff.
When Atlanta moved to Winnipeg, I knew some realignment was happening. I just figured they'd move Columbus or Detroit to the East and Winnipeg would be in the West.
ReplyDeleteThen I saw that a more radical realignment happened. As I was reading the article, I thought, "Great, less travel for the Red Wings. Oh, that sounds cool having 4 mini Final Fours in each conference. I thought they'd pair up the two more western conferences and the two eastern conferences and do a regular playoffs, but what they chose doesn't sound bad. That'll really build up some rivalries. Not perfect, but sounds cool."
Looking at your plans, I like plan C the best. That's what I thought they were going to do when I first started reading about the radical realignment. I hope the conference pairings are permanent, rather than change from year-to-year.
I don't mind if the 5th best team in a really strong conference gets left out because they should have just won more games during the year. Balance of power shifts, so there's no way to always keep it equal. So the 12th best team doesn't get in. They're not in the top 66% of the NHL. Sure, I also root for the St. Louis Cardinals, who just won the World Series after making it in as a wild card on the last day of the season, but I don't feel much sympathy for teams that get left out. How often do the worse teams that get in actually do something in the playoffs?
Just conference playoffs until the semifinals could get boring when you play the same teams more during the regular season and then also in the first two rounds of the playoffs. I kind of like playing the Sharks or Ducks in the playoffs instead of the Blackhawks or Blues.
I don't think it's a big deal if teams have to travel farther for the playoffs, especially if they have a lot less travel during the regular season.
My vote is for plan C2. Columbus should be in that conference anyway. Why aren't they? Big rivalry with Detroit? Nashville? Nobody cares about Columbus.
How about another plan! Seed based only on record 1-16, which would allow a fair system and also maximize the variety of matchups. Basically, any team could play any team in any round. We could have a Cup Final of Leafs-Habs, Blackhawks-Red Wings, etc.
ReplyDeleteIt seems silly on the face of it, but....
ReplyDeleteI think I kind of love this. It's basically like March Madness. It's the most fair, always putting in the best teams, saving the best matchups for last. (Under Plan A, it's super realistic that the top two teams in the league could face each other in the first or second round, not the Cup.
So kudos to you, anonymous!