The last few weeks of the 2021-22 NHL season have had all the drama of a foregone conclusion.
The Eastern Conference playoff field has been set since, oh I don’t know, Halloween 2021. The eight playoff teams aren’t jockeying for position as much as they’re letting the chips fall where they may and hoping not to lose any vital players to injury before the real season starts.
The Western Conference has an actual playoff race between the Vegas Golden Knights and schadenfreude, with the Vancouver Canucks attempting a last-second surge. Otherwise, the West is set, and has been for some time.
This is the part of the “Shark Tank” pitch where the inventor says, “It doesn’t have to be this way!”
After adding Vegas and Seattle in the last five years, the NHL now has 32 teams. Half of them do not qualify for the playoffs. That is abjectly preposterous, and deleterious to growing the game.
Here’s what the NHL postseason should look like, going forward:
20 teams, 10 from each conference
Start with a play-in round, featuring the No. 7-10 seeds, adopting the NBA’s efficient and fair format
After the play-in round, the undeniably perfect 16-team battle of attrition known as the Stanley Cup playoffs
OK, almost perfect: Reorganize the final four teams by regular-season record, foregoing geographic designations in lieu of potential rivalry matchups for the Cup
Be happy
Print money
Let’s go
At a time when the other three major sports leagues are expanding their postseason fields through additional teams or play-in games, the NHL has only expanded the number of teams whose seasons end after Game No. 82. It’s leaving money on the table. It’s muting late-season drama. It’s stubbornly refusing to push more teams and star players into the center-stage spotlight of the Stanley Cup playoffs, when the NHL is at its apex for attention from the general public.
Because there’s nothing the NHL does better than to market the Stanley Cup playoffs. Case in point:
Seriously, how great was that…
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