I'm sorry, but I feel that the NBA and the NHL have it wrong with the playoffs. Any league that allows over half of their teams to advance to the postseason is worthy of being smacked in the face. Now I know there have been some 8 seeds that won(see Golden State and Denver in the NBA and San Jose a few times in the NHL), but do all of the games matter in the regular season when 16 out of 30 teams advance to the playoffs?
It was different in the NHL when the set up was different(actually having division playoffs then the conference finals) and I think the NHL can go back to it. When a league has 3 divisions of 5 teams each, there should be a divisional round of playoffs between the top 2 teams in each division. Here are what the matchups would be:
East(divisional round-best of 5) Atlantic: New Jersey v. Pittsburgh Northeast: Ottawa v. Montreal Southeast: Carolina v. Washington The team with the highest point total that loses in this round advances as a wild card(we could tweek this)
West(divisional round-best of 5) Central: Nashville v. Detroit Northwest: Colorado v. Minnesota Pacific: Anaheim v. San Jose And a wildcard team
The NBA could also do this, or they just allow the top 4 teams in each conference to advance(each division winner and top 2nd place team)
Round 1(Best of 7) East Cleveland(Wild Card) v. Boston(Atlantic) Orlando(Southeast) v. Detroit(Central) West San Antonio(Wild Card) v. Los Angeles(Pacific) Utah(Northwest) v. New Orleans(Southwest)
I would actually care about the NBA playoffs if this was the layout, instead of waiting until the conference finals to start paying attention.
It's about money... but honestly, the big fans of the NBA and the NHL would hate something of this nature. I spend the entire summer waiting for basketball season to start back up again. The more basketball, the better it is for the fans.
1) Having the team with the highest point total who loses in the divisional playoff advance makes 1/3 of all divisional playoff games obsolete. This goes against your logic of games being worthless when 16/30 make it.
2) There'd still be the same amount of playoff series - 6 to 4, 4 to 2, 2 to 1, then a Stanley Cup. Why not just make it 8? Letting two more teams in is better than making playoff games obsolete, or having byes.
3) A divisional system is unfair because point totals can vary so much within divisions - do you think Carolina deserves to be in over the Rangers? I understand the current system gives little value to divisions at all, but so what?
If you want to reduce the amount of playoff teams to 6, you'd have to have byes. This would get boring in 5 or 7 game series.
I am an avid sports fan who attempts to watch/read about as many games as possible. Growing up in St. Louis, I am a die-hard St. Louis Cardinals fan. Not having an NFL team for most of my life, until the Rams showed up, I am a Tennessee Titans fan and I am also a University of Tennessee fan. I am a recent graduate of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
