PITY SOME TOP CLUBS
NHL playoffs need work
Alex Ovechkin ended his 10game goalless drought and the Washington Capitals snapped a season-worst four-game losing skid on Tuesday night. But the big take-away from the 4-2 win over the Minnesota Wild was that it put the Capitals back at the top of the NHL standings.
That’s not just a braggingrights type of accomplishment. Winning the Presidents’ Trophy this year matters. It means getting to play the lower wild card team in the first round of the playoffs. That’s a much better prospect than facing the Pittsburgh Penguins or Columbus Blue Jackets, who not only own the second- and third-best records in the Metropolitan Division and Eastern Conference, but also in the entire league.
That the Penguins and Blue Jackets would have to play each other if the season ended today is a bit kooky. But I don’t know what’s sillier: that two of the top three teams in the NHL could be first-round opponents, or that two of the top three teams will be gone after the second round because of the division-focused playoff format the NHL introduced for the 2013-14 season.
The playoff format has become a reverse meritocracy this year. The best division this year by far is the Metropolitan, currently with the top three teams in the NHL by points. The Capitals lead the NHL with 97 points, the Penguins are second with 95 and the Blue Jackets third with 94. Even the fourth-best team in the division, the New York Rangers, has the fourth-best record in the Eastern Conference.
But rather than seed those teams based on wins and losses and how well they have performed, the NHL three years ago re-aligned its conferences and instituted a playoff structure that plays up divisional battles.
Because the top team in each division gets awarded the No. 1 and 2 seed in the conference, the Rangers (fourth-most points in the conference) would enter the playoffs as the seventh seed if the season were to end today. Coincidentally, they would still play the Montreal Canadiens (fifth-most points) in the first round, except under the new format, the Habs would have home-ice advantage because they are the top team in the Atlantic Division. As things stand, if the Rangers were to advance, they’d play the winner of an Ottawa-Boston series and wouldn’t face one of their Metropolitan siblings until the conference final. You might argue they would have an easier path to the Stanley Cup final than Washington, Pittsburgh and Columbus.
Yeah, we know, it’s dumb. And what’s the point in all of this?
Obviously, the NHL decided on this format after re-aligning the league in 2013-14. Travel was a major motivator, as was keeping teams within the same time zone for the first couple of rounds. If the NHL wanted to make things fair and make winning the Presidents’ Trophy more important, it would seed every team regardless of division or conference. Instead of Washington playing the eighth-ranked team in the
Familiarity supposedly creates hatred, which can be a great thing. … But it cannot be forced — it has to be organic.
East, they would play the 16thranked team in the NHL.
But the bigger reason the NHL did this was to play up divisional rivalries, which everyone likes except for Minnesota Wild fans.
Within the last three years, the following has happened: the Penguins have played the Rangers in either the first or second round, Tampa Bay has played Montreal twice, St. Louis has played Chicago twice and there have been two battles of California between the Sharks and Kings.
Familiarity supposedly creates hatred, which can be a great thing for opposing cities. It’s what makes any regular season game between Montreal and Boston interesting. But it cannot be forced — it has to be organic.
Lumping together two teams for the sake of building up a rivalry is sort of like a staged fight. You get the end result, but without the buildup.
What’s better: having Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby play in the first or even second round, or having them meet in the conference final? It would build momentum. There’s a payoff there that comes from watching both players battle through the playoffs to get to that point. That it might not happen only adds intrigue for when it actually does.
Instead, fans will have a postseason where two of the top three teams will be gone after the second round. That’s just dumb.