NHL’s bizarre playoffs beat NBA’s predictability

On the list of Columns I Almost Wrote But Am Glad I Didn’t, there is a recent entry: The NHL has a parity problem.

Much of what would have been the evidence for that piece remains true. The early rounds of the Stanley Cup Playoffs did their usual thing, which is take a bunch of teams of varying levels of skill and ability and churn out winners seemingly at random.

Chicago, Minnesota, Montreal and Columbus, all strong 100-point teams in the regular season, didn’t make it past the first round. Washington, which won 55 games when no other team won more than 50, barely survived eighth-seed Toronto, then was dismissed in the second round anyway.

There is something to be said for this kind of unpredictability, but it comes at a cost. When your season is an 82-game slog of attrition followed by the Wacky Wheel of Playoff Success, you run the risk that fans grow tired of the mirage of their team’s regular-season performance.

Conveniently for the NHL, the NBA playoffs have been unfolding concurrently, and they happen to be an example of how bad things can get when the post-season goes another way. As much as hockey’s wild playoffs undercut the point of the regular season, basketball’s playoffs have felt utterly meaningless, as everyone waits for the inevitable Cleveland-Golden State NBA Finals for the third straight year.

This season feels like the inevitable climax to the trend that began a decade ago with the assembly of the star-laden team in Boston, followed by LeBron’s trip to South Beach.

While the NBA has tried to limit the ability of Super Friends to combine their powers, there is only so much they can do. Kevin Durant’s decision to join the 73-win team in Golden State is a clear indication that, in basketball, anyone who is not joining a team of megastars is kind of wasting their time.

The top-heavy NBA should make for an incredible Finals, but it has been a painful road there. And barring injuries, it’s hard not to think the coming off-season and all of next season will just be a prelude to CavsWarriors IV.

Hockey’s system, with the hard salary cap that squeezes every team toward the middle, at least has the merit of giving many teams a true shot at success.

Parity has all but ruined predictability in the NHL playoffs, but they do not lack for excitement. And as the NBA has shown, it beats the alternative.

Although, if 44-win Ottawa meets 41-win Nashville in the Stanley Cup Final, I reserve the right to bring back that column I didn’t write.