Post by nfld77 on May 20, 2020 0:13:30 GMT -5
Hope this helps..
With the optimism surrounding the return of pro sports in the near future, it’s starting to feel like there’s light at the end of this dark, dreary tunnel. The NHL has had plenty of meetings and discussions recently, and we’re starting to see a clearer picture of what the format for a season resumption might look like.
To make a return as safe as possible, the NHL will be likely to use four hub cities, sequestering divisional teams into one area. According to Pierre LeBrun, it’s unlikely that teams at the bottom of the standings will be expected to play, meaning the league is likely to go directly to a modified playoff scenario with 20 or 24 teams, with a 24-team format leading the charge. With four hub cities, 18- and 22-team playoffs look like they’re out of the question, and I’m not sure there’s an appetite for just 16 teams because of the money that’s on the line.
In March, I looked at the inequity of potential playoff formats under the suspicion that there wouldn’t be enough time to complete the regular season. We’ve learned a fair bit since then about the league and players’ appetite to jump right into the playoffs, and though it’s unlikely that the regular season will be concluded, some games will probably be played first.
What we might see, according to Scott Burnside, is a round-robin format within the hub cities in which every team plays the others once: five games each in a 24-team scenario and four games in a 20-team scenario. I helped project what the standings might look like under those two scenarios over the weekend, but it’s worth digging deeper into the implications of the decision.
24 teams
This is the front-runner return scenario. Whether it should be is very much up for debate.
It seems like the only reason for this format is monetary. More teams mean more revenue. It feels misguided, yet the reasons are easy to see: New York, Chicago and Montreal. Three gigantic and historical markets that collectively are seeing their playoff chances jump 104 percentage points. Montreal and Chicago, in particular, would go from almost zero percent at the pause all the way to 40 percent.
And trust me, I do get it. Money matters in a time like this when the NHL’s bottom line has absorbed a devastating blow. But it ignores this: Propping up those huge markets would likely come at the expense of the league’s biggest Canadian market (Toronto), an important U.S. market with perhaps the league’s most marketable player (Pittsburgh) and a Canadian market with the other most marketable player (Edmonton). Meanwhile, Dallas, the team hurt most, is the fifth-biggest television market in the U.S. The league would be taking 85 playoff percentage points away from those four teams’ playoff chances — teams that showed in the first 70 games that they belonged. Dallas, a market that has growth potential, would go from a near-lock at 96 percent before the season was suspended to 61 percent to placate Chicago, a market that won’t grow much from a Round 1 exit.
It also ignores that those three teams would be better served long term by being in the draft lottery, anyway. The collective odds of their making it past the first round (after the play-in) is 31 percent, and doing so wouldn’t be a sign that the team deserved its place. It would mostly be because of sheer randomness.
The other issue with a 24-team playoff is that seeding will depend on the play-in game, even after accounting for a round robin. That invites too much chaos. Only one bye, Edmonton’s, looks really up for grabs, but even that isn’t likely.
Chasing money and sacrificing equity in the process lessens the integrity of the format. The Stanley Cup is supposed to be “the hardest sports trophy to win,” but that messaging is hard to swallow when a team gets a chance to participate — no matter how tiny — that it didn’t earn during the season and any winner will undoubtedly be asterisked forever. There’s a better way to do this.
20 teams
Before the stoppage, two-thirds of the league had a legitimate claim to a playoff spot, though obviously to varying degrees. Sticking with 16 teams with 12 games left is too harsh to bubble teams. But opting for 24 teams is far too lenient. A 20-team playoff is in the Goldilocks Zone: just right.
From the projected standings above, it should be obvious that a 20-team playoff is the best answer for the NHL. It includes the electric excitement that a play-in series can deliver while being fair to the teams that proved their worth over the first 70 games. Teams are significantly closer to their pre-stoppage odds.
In all, the total playoff inequity is just 158 percentage points, half the amount of the 24-team playoff (319 percent). Only two teams would see their playoff odds change by more than 20 percentage points: the Rangers (divisional format is the big issue here) and the Blue Jackets (a return to health and a switch to the Atlantic hub is the likely cause here). That’s compared with seven (Montreal, Chicago, Arizona, New York, Dallas, Carolina, Pittsburgh) in the 24-team format.
In the Atlantic, Toronto would be closer to the 4-in-5 chance it had when the season stopped compared with a 3-in-5 shot. In the Metropolitan, there’d be no risk of Washington or Philadelphia missing (a small but real possibility in a 24-team setting — imagine that PR nightmare), and Pittsburgh’s odds would be identical to its pre-pause odds of 96 percent, as should be the case. The Hurricanes and Islanders would take a bit of a hit, but that has more to do with the divisions. Both teams’ chances improve in a 20-team setting compared with 24 teams.
In the West, Dallas and Edmonton’s odds are restored to the 90 percent range, plus there’s a guaranteed all-Canadian series in the Pacific. The league doesn’t get Leafs-Habs (a potentially epic clash that is the only reason I will allow for a 24-team playoff), but there was a chance that might not even happen after a round robin, anyway.
The other thing is that though the round robin would be a game shorter, it would actually mean something because of the proximity of the third- to fifth-place teams in the Atlantic and Pacific fighting for a third-place bye (Burnside’s report suggests only one team per hub would get a bye, but three byes is the only way to get to the traditional 16-team format). It would be less of a formality and would introduce a playoff atmosphere even earlier in the proceedings. Under a 24-team format, there isn’t as much to play for until the inevitable play-in games. Here, almost every team has a real chance to earn a bye.
The choice should be obvious to those without dollar signs in their eyes, but even that logic can be argued against. A 20-team playoff is significantly fairer than a format with 24 teams and keeps the integrity of a playoff intact.
Modified 24-team
There is a compromise, one that combines the best features of both formats: a modified 24-team format where the sixth team is dropped and there’s only one play-in game between the fourth and fifth seeds (thanks to a Twitter tip for the idea). You get the third-seed security and round-robin excitement from a 20-team format (especially if there’s the chance one team gets eliminated) while allowing for an expanded pool of teams to earn back revenue.
Now, the road ahead would be quite arduous for Montreal and Chicago, but that’s the way it should be given the position each team put itself in through the first 70 games. Both teams would have to go on an almost impossible run to even make it, making their inclusion a lot more palatable. A play-in game against the third seed is too much of a gift in a sport that can be as random as hockey.
Here are the odds if the league opts for a 24-team format where the sixth seed in each division gets dropped before the playoffs.
You’ll notice Montreal is at zero percent. It’s not quite that, but it’s close: The team’s odds are roughly 2000-to-1. That’s because the team’s odds of simply being the fifth seed are a little under 1000-to-1. This exposes how insane it would be to even give a team this far out a chance against the third seed in a three-game playoff where their odds would skyrocket to roughly 40 percent. Unfair? Not even close. Before the stoppage, Montreal’s playoff odds were about 1,500-to-1. That’s equity.
The same thing goes for Chicago, with odds are just 1 percent. It’s a drop from the 3 percent the team was at before the playoffs, sure, but it’s much closer to that reality than the 40 percent the Blackhawks would get otherwise. You may think “well, what’s the point at all then for a one percent chance?” That in and of itself is exactly the point and why a 20-team format is the best course of action.
What this format does do, though, is give a real chance to teams like Arizona and the Rangers, teams that weren’t quite out of it at the time, deserve some chance and shouldn’t be cast aside completely. Arizona is at just 8 percent here, so we’re being liberal with the words “real chance,” but that’s better than zero or 50 – the Coyotes were at 16 percent before the stoppage. The Rangers get a huge boost here by being in the Atlantic hub, but no format will be perfect and this satisfies the league’s thirst for giving a big-market team a bigger chance than it deserves. A Boston-vs.-New York first-round matchup, anyone?
The divisional format that severely helps the Rangers really screws the Hurricanes, Islanders and especially Blue Jackets, though, where the round-robin fight to be in the play-in game would be very tough. All three teams see the largest losses in playoff odds.
In all, eight teams would see their odds jump by 10 percentage points or more, which is comparable with the 20-team format, where there’s seven. The 24-team format with just two byes has 13. The boost in equity is massive, too, as the overall total from the modified format is 166 percentage points — not far off from the 20-team format and a massive improvement from the original 24-team format.
The NHL has options, and all signs point to the league taking the wrong one. We’ll have no choice but to accept it and, hey, if it means hockey is back, sign me up. But it’s clear that if the league does go the way it’s headed, it will be leaving better options on the table and sacrificing integrity for revenue.
Thanks alot guys..Makes me feel much better knowing that most realize that a 24 team PO format with 10-12 games remaining in a regular season is total bullshit..And I realize the NHL needs to get some cash back BUT this isnt the way to do it, total embaressment to what the Stanley Cup represents..