Coming home for lunch from work, I was listening to the FAN590 just now and Nick Kypreos had something interesting to say (which was interesting in itself).
He put forth a new playoff format. One that I would have to agree, makes a lot of sense.
First of all, Divisions and Conferences would be meaningless, and this has been said in the past, so if that is not something you might agree with, no need to read further…
The top 16 teams in regular season points would make the playoffs, period.
Prior to the first round, the top 7 teams would hold a draft from #1 through to #7 and handpick their choice of a first round opponent. Team # 8 would obviously have whoever was left after the first 7 chosen.
Prior to the second round, the top 3 seeded regular season teams that were still alive, would then draft for their second round opponent, leaving the 4th seed whoever was left. And so on.
Had this format been in place, the Isles would not have been a playoff team for starters. The Colorado Avalanche would be.
Now if you are Darcy Regier, who would you have taken? Possibly the Atlanta Thrashers? Now they weren’t the lowest seed, but they did sort of back their way into the playoffs and they did have some known playoff no-shows in their line up, along with a rookie goaltender. Or might he have chosen someone like the Flames, who really backed their way in, but on the other hand the travel would have been less like-able.
And how would these lower seed teams look at being embarrassed by being one of the first teams chosen in the draft? Might they have something more to prove to defeat the team that obviously took them lightly?
I think this is a very interesting idea. And this coming from a guy that isn’t real big on big changes.
