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.