How to fix the Playoff Format & Tanking Issue

[Skeksis25]

Some of you people are so weird about the whole tanking thing. You guys act like this is a video game or something and franchises are closed off entities doing things with only one goal in mind at a time and everyone is always 100% bought in to that because they will be a part of that franchise in perpetuity. If that were the case, then sure, your weird ass solutions to prevent "tanking" may make some sense.

Right now? Its so ludicrous. Why would would be free agents on the Sharks give a rat's ass about some tournament to help their draft pick? Why would the coach who most likely won't even be on the team in 2-3 years care about improving the organization's odds about picking someone higher? And the whole tanking thing, do you really think players, coaches, heck even the GM who all are most likely not even going to be a part of the organization in 5 years are willingly sacrificing their own stats, success and potential future earnings to help the organization get a higher pick?

Every few weeks some of you guys come up with some grand solution to tanking, when its not really an issue. Bad teams exist. They always have existed. The draft is designed to help the bad teams get better, cause bad teams being bad in perpetuity does not help anyone.

Its like you have decided that having bad teams in your league is a terrible problem that must not be allowed. But also, the solution is we will make one of the ways bad teams can get better be as hard to obtain for those teams as possible. That will fix it!

 

[Bob and 200 others]

until the NHL expands to 36 teams (Salt Lake City, Houston, Atlanta, Quebec City). After that expand the playoffs to 1-16 for each conference. It stops teams from tanking because only four teams won't make the playoffs

Oof, horrendous idea! You've made the regular season totally irrelevant, why not just skip it at that point? The NHL has always been the anti baseball, just making the playoffs should be something special. You've turned the regular season into a really long preseason.

 

[Perfect_Drug]

One major change I would make to the draft is 'snaking' the selection order.

1st pick means your 2nd round pick will be 64th

Team that drafts 32 will also get to draft 33rd

 

[Gaud]

The NHL is facing many challenges right now which were reportedly discussed in some of the last few GM meetings, notably:

• Not enough teams in the playoffs. The number of teams in the league have went up but not the number of playoffs team.
• Tanking. How to solve this?
• Generating more revenue and viewership in the league, specially for some of the bottom teams in the league at the tail end of the season (low attendance and follower-ship).
• (This point is not necessarily discussed by GMs but) there is definitely some frustration on the fan side with the current format of playoffs by division which penalizes teams in stronger divisions and takes away some of the point of finishing first in the conference for the sake of “rivalry”.

I’ve been following this league for decades and as a business major, have studied the NHL business model quite a bit as part of one of my researches (for what it’s worth, I documented a paper on the potential expansion of the NHL to Vegas and Seattle back in 2009).
This doesn’t mean I know the league’s business model, ownership dynamic and vision inside and out, but I’d like to think that I have some basic understanding of their business model and the CBA.
My proposed solution:

Playoffs:
1-6 of each conference automatically make it in the round of 16.
7 plays 10, 8 plays 9 in a best of 3 or 5 (further market study required) in a Wild-card play-in tournament to get one of the final 2 wildcard spots.
The team ranked first in each conference get to PICK their matchup among the 2 teams that won their wildcard matchup from their conference.
The other wildcard team that isn’t picked plays the 2nd of the conference (then 3vs6, 4vs5).

Objectives attainted:

• More teams involved in the playoffs.
• More revenue generated.
• Better significance to finishing first of the conference.
• More “buzz” around the wildcard teams and the matchup picked by the team finishing first. (Could you imagine what an upset would do in terms of buzz to the league if a team picked their matchup and lost? You wanted to create rivalry?)
• More fair advantages to teams finishing top 4 in the conference.

Draft Tournament:
Bottom 8 teams in the league (based on overall NHL standing), get randomly drawn into matchups together (no conference or standing criteria).
This is a single knockoff 3 round tournament.
The 2 finalists of this mini-tournament will get the first 2 overall picks (winner gets first overall).
Everyone else that participated are ordered in the draft based on their final regular season standing regardless of how far they made it in the tournament. For example, this means that the team that finished last in the standings will get 3rd overall at worst if they don’t make it to the final (let’s say they got eliminated in the first round).

Note: For the first round matchups, the team lower in the standings should get home-ice for that single KO game.
For the semi final and final (since it’s a 3 round KO tournament), the team highest in the standings get the home ice.

Objectives attainted:

• You make teams work for those sought after first 2 overall picks.
• Cut down on tanking significantly as 8 teams have an equal opportunity for those 2 picks.
• The teams that finish at the bottom of the league are still not too penalized as they can only drop 2 spots (doesn’t halt their rebuild).
• Gives an opportunity for those lower-middle ranked teams to get competitive faster.
• More revenue and buzz generated.

Overall:
When combining these 2 elements, the NHL would arguably create a more competitive environment, while giving more significance to the regular season performance.
Additionally, depending on whether they would go with a best of 3 or 5 format for the wildcard games, the league would generate more revenue with up to 17 additional games (or 13 if it’s a best of 3, which is personally my preference), without mentioning the buzz that it would create.
With this format, all but 4 teams would see some sort of action past the 82 game mark (whether it’s through the playoffs, wildcard play-ins or the Draft Tournament).
The wild card play-in and the draft tournament would be played at the same time.
If the league is indeed planning on expanding in the medium-term, this format becomes that much more interesting.
(On a side note, the league should consider making the preseason a little shorter and start the regular season by the end of September rather than in mid October). At the end of it all, the Stanley Cup final would take place a little earlier. (FYI most teams lose money on preseason games anyway).

Sorry for the long text but felt I had to be somewhat thorough about the explanations.
Curious to hear what people think of this proposal (constructive comments and feedback only please).

Thanks for reading.

I agree that there should be more teams in the playoffs. With talks of adding salt lake city and maybe houston (or atlanta, wtf?), more than half the teams would be out of the playoffs. The current system doesnt reward teams with successful seasons as much, and often has teams that have less points in the playoffs over technicalities over teams with more points. Your system adds 4 teams, though and i'd like the league to think bigger. Like top 4 of each conference are in, and 8 next teams fight for the remaining 4 spots. Gives top 4 time to heal, but winning bottom four may get momentum.

I also agree that

 

[Gaud]

The NHL is facing many challenges right now which were reportedly discussed in some of the last few GM meetings, notably:

• Not enough teams in the playoffs. The number of teams in the league have went up but not the number of playoffs team.
• Tanking. How to solve this?
• Generating more revenue and viewership in the league, specially for some of the bottom teams in the league at the tail end of the season (low attendance and follower-ship).
• (This point is not necessarily discussed by GMs but) there is definitely some frustration on the fan side with the current format of playoffs by division which penalizes teams in stronger divisions and takes away some of the point of finishing first in the conference for the sake of “rivalry”.

I’ve been following this league for decades and as a business major, have studied the NHL business model quite a bit as part of one of my researches (for what it’s worth, I documented a paper on the potential expansion of the NHL to Vegas and Seattle back in 2009).
This doesn’t mean I know the league’s business model, ownership dynamic and vision inside and out, but I’d like to think that I have some basic understanding of their business model and the CBA.
My proposed solution:

Playoffs:
1-6 of each conference automatically make it in the round of 16.
7 plays 10, 8 plays 9 in a best of 3 or 5 (further market study required) in a Wild-card play-in tournament to get one of the final 2 wildcard spots.
The team ranked first in each conference get to PICK their matchup among the 2 teams that won their wildcard matchup from their conference.
The other wildcard team that isn’t picked plays the 2nd of the conference (then 3vs6, 4vs5).

Objectives attainted:

• More teams involved in the playoffs.
• More revenue generated.
• Better significance to finishing first of the conference.
• More “buzz” around the wildcard teams and the matchup picked by the team finishing first. (Could you imagine what an upset would do in terms of buzz to the league if a team picked their matchup and lost? You wanted to create rivalry?)
• More fair advantages to teams finishing top 4 in the conference.

Draft Tournament:
Bottom 8 teams in the league (based on overall NHL standing), get randomly drawn into matchups together (no conference or standing criteria).
This is a single knockoff 3 round tournament.
The 2 finalists of this mini-tournament will get the first 2 overall picks (winner gets first overall).
Everyone else that participated are ordered in the draft based on their final regular season standing regardless of how far they made it in the tournament. For example, this means that the team that finished last in the standings will get 3rd overall at worst if they don’t make it to the final (let’s say they got eliminated in the first round).

Note: For the first round matchups, the team lower in the standings should get home-ice for that single KO game.
For the semi final and final (since it’s a 3 round KO tournament), the team highest in the standings get the home ice.

Objectives attainted:

• You make teams work for those sought after first 2 overall picks.
• Cut down on tanking significantly as 8 teams have an equal opportunity for those 2 picks.
• The teams that finish at the bottom of the league are still not too penalized as they can only drop 2 spots (doesn’t halt their rebuild).
• Gives an opportunity for those lower-middle ranked teams to get competitive faster.
• More revenue and buzz generated.

Overall:
When combining these 2 elements, the NHL would arguably create a more competitive environment, while giving more significance to the regular season performance.
Additionally, depending on whether they would go with a best of 3 or 5 format for the wildcard games, the league would generate more revenue with up to 17 additional games (or 13 if it’s a best of 3, which is personally my preference), without mentioning the buzz that it would create.
With this format, all but 4 teams would see some sort of action past the 82 game mark (whether it’s through the playoffs, wildcard play-ins or the Draft Tournament).
The wild card play-in and the draft tournament would be played at the same time.
If the league is indeed planning on expanding in the medium-term, this format becomes that much more interesting.
(On a side note, the league should consider making the preseason a little shorter and start the regular season by the end of September rather than in mid October). At the end of it all, the Stanley Cup final would take place a little earlier. (FYI most teams lose money on preseason games anyway).

Sorry for the long text but felt I had to be somewhat thorough about the explanations.
Curious to hear what people think of this proposal (constructive comments and feedback only please).

Thanks for reading.

I think tanking (to a certain point) is a valid strategy; I see a team selling its older assets for a rebuild as tanking. I think if a team gets rid of its promising youth to sink, that this is a different matter. I also think there are differing lines of thinking between whether a better pick is better, or installing a winning culture at the onset is better over time.

I think what you are trying to address is to ensure the best picks go to the teams that genuinely need it.

The idea you propose to have teams "earn" the first overall is interesting, but i find your solution is flawed; if it works, then, technically, the favorites in the tournament would be the 7th and 8th last as the teams in the 2 last postions CANT compete with them. The middle teams get competitive faster, sure, but the lower teams rebuild using #3 overalls at best.

Also, the tanking "cheating" would take a new form. Teams are now making their star players that have injuries miss out the end of the season only to make a "miraculous" comeback for the playoffs, which lets them circumvent the cap. If I am a team in the bottom half, i could use this to drop to the bottom 8 and then miraculously win the tourney for a 1st overall.

 

[HamiltonNHL]

Not enough teams in the playoffs. The number of teams in the league have went up but not the number of playoffs team.

Ridiculous ?

16 teams is a lot !

 

[JackSlater]

Tanking is fine and will always exist as long as the draft incentivizes bad teams to be bad. The playoffs should just be 1-8.

 

[HamiltonNHL]

The draft lottery got rid of the real tanking.

 

[SnuggaRUDE]

Oof, horrendous idea! You've made the regular season totally irrelevant, why not just skip it at that point? The NHL has always been the anti baseball, just making the playoffs should be something special. You've turned the regular season into a really long preseason.

I've never seen the O6 era so disrespected

 

[KingsOfCali25]

Oof, horrendous idea! You've made the regular season totally irrelevant, why not just skip it at that point? The NHL has always been the anti baseball, just making the playoffs should be something special. You've turned the regular season into a really long preseason.

No. It's the same way as it is now. Whether you call that irrelevant or not, the season is useless. Teams don't care until around the TDL. That's like the last two months of the regular season (20 games). It's like that in every sport. These guys are about money and entertainment.

 

[BLNY]

Return to the 1 vs 8 format, abolish the lottery. Playoffs should never have been messed with and we have a lottery because people actually bitched about the expansion (under 1992 rules) Senators being too bad. They ended up with arguably the biggest bust in history.

Just stop it. Teams deliberately tank for draft odds now

They've been messed with multiple times. The impact of initial expansion and the absorption of WHA teams lead to 4 divisions. For more than 15 years, it was divisional semi, division final, conference final, final. Bettman thought the old school match-ups were repetitive and boring. He was convinced that 1-8 would solve that and create new rivalries. Neither it, nor the current format with wild cards, accomplished it. I don't care how bad the 1980s classic Norris Division comprised of the Wings, Hawks, Blues, North Stars, and Leafs was during the season. It produced entertaining playoff hockey because the teams hated each other - the result of 4 of them meeting in the playoffs each year. Give me back divisional rounds any day and bring back the animosity it brought.

 

[Spilot23]

I'm no Oilers fan but damn I would be so annoyed facing the same team for a 3rd straight year in the first round. Just use the 1-8 format I don't why it wasn't approved when most of the GMs and players want that if I'm correct.

 

[66871]

Best way to avoid tanking would be to just give the Penguins the first overall every year. Problem solved.

 

[parrotdude]

Nobody has talked about the logistics of the original proposals.

Tournament of Shame (aka draft tournament):
* When would you have the tournament play? While the play-in or playoffs are going? Squeeze it between the Stanley Cup and Draft Day/Free Agent Day? Would you rather watch the best teams, mediocre teams or worst teams play.
* Where would they play? Have teams travel like regular season or single NHLPA compliant arena? Mullet Arena had to go through modifications for the Coyotes.
* Who would want to watch the worst teams? Good luck getting a TV contract.
* Why would the Owners want to pay the expenses (there are a lot of other costs than just players, coaches, and facilities) just to battle for the 1OA pick?
Summary: This would be expensive for only true fanatics to watch for too little reward while shaming players.

Play-In: In all the years of having 16 team playoffs, only one eighth seed has won the Cup (2012 Kings). Play-ins seems great, but people will quickly figure out the play-in teams will never win and stay home. It simply dilutes the playoffs. It will make hot streaky scorers, hot handed goaltenders, and peaking teams wait at home when they should be playing.

TL;DR: Too much expense for something nobody but a minority of most fanatical fans would watch. Averaging the last three seasons for draft order seems plausible.

 

[Brodeur]

One major change I would make to the draft is 'snaking' the selection order.

1st pick means your 2nd round pick will be 64th

Team that drafts 32 will also get to draft 33rd

Probably overcomplicates things. Made some sense that they did it in 2005 when there was no season. But in practice I think the snake draft is a better idea for a fantasy league where the idea is to have an even-ish playing field versus a draft where the idea is slant things to help the bad clubs.

 

[CincoHolio]

I have no issues with tanking. The playoff format does require fixing. Hated it from day 1.

 

[ForumNamePending]

Like what just about everyone else is saying ditch the divisional playoffs and go to 1 vs 8, 2 vs 7, etc... Probably give the two division winners the top seeds.

I don't see the league making any changes to the current playoff format though, at least not until expansion. Probably sooner rather than later the league is going to 36 teams, and at that point will probably go to a 20 team playoff, with teams 4-5 in each division, or 7-10 in each conference, playing some sort of play-in. Don't love it, but I guess in a world with a 36 team NHL I wouldn't loathe it either.

As far as the draft goes... This will never happen because the league is controlled by cowards, but I say scrap it entirely... Well phase it out over time. Have teams recruit, and even setup their own youth development academy/teams like we see in Europe.

So assuming the league doesn't find some courage... I've seen it suggested a few times/places now that the team that gains the most points once they have been mathematically eliminated from playoff contention should get the 1st pick, second most points gets the 2nd pick, etc. Without thinking about it too hard I like the idea, but I'm sure someone who has given it more thought than I have will tell me why the idea is terrible.

 

[Jeremy2020]

So a business major wants top fix things without a clear business value and suggests things based on emotions.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

I don't care how bad the 1980s classic Norris Division comprised of the Wings, Hawks, Blues, North Stars, and Leafs was during the season. It produced entertaining playoff hockey because the teams hated each other - the result of 4 of them meeting in the playoffs each year. Give me back divisional rounds any day and bring back the animosity it brought.

It wasn't just that, it was that they'd play each other 8 times in the regular season with at least one back-to-back [most of the time two], then go play each other in the playoffs. You had a season to hate the hell out of the other team, then a postseason to go hate the hell out of them some more.

The league tried to do some of that coming out of the 2005 lockout, with division rivals playing each other ~8 times. People hated it. Probably because some of the time two teams would play each other 7 times in like 18 games at some point in the season, but even now for every person who wants more divisional games there's another who doesn't.

Today? Unless we're going to say 8 division of 4 - cue 32,768 ideas for scheduling in that format, 16,384 other comments screaming don't f***ing ever do it - or something else that gets the number of teams in a division down to 5 or 6, it's hard to get all that emotion in divisional games back. It's like asking to resurrect the hate that existed between the Steelers and the Houston Oilers when they were in the same division, even though the Oilers are now in Tennessee and in a completely different division.

 

[Mattilaus]

Can anyone explain to me how you tell the difference between a team tanking and a team that trades off its vets for draft capital during a rebuild? Because afaik the latter seems to be fine but what specifically do tanking teams do differently than team just selling off vets for a rebuild?

Or is the message here that bad/mediocre teams should just keep re-signing their aging vets forever hoping they will one day not be bad/mediocre?

 

[BLNY]

It wasn't just that, it was that they'd play each other 8 times in the regular season with at least one back-to-back [most of the time two], then go play each other in the playoffs. You had a season to hate the hell out of the other team, then a postseason to go hate the hell out of them some more.

The league tried to do some of that coming out of the 2005 lockout, with division rivals playing each other ~8 times. People hated it. Probably because some of the time two teams would play each other 7 times in like 18 games at some point in the season, but even now for every person who wants more divisional games there's another who doesn't.

Today? Unless we're going to say 8 division of 4 - cue 32,768 ideas for scheduling in that format, 16,384 other comments screaming don't f***ing ever do it - or something else that gets the number of teams in a division down to 5 or 6, it's hard to get all that emotion in divisional games back. It's like asking to resurrect the hate that existed between the Steelers and the Houston Oilers when they were in the same division, even though the Oilers are now in Tennessee and in a completely different division.

Short of increasing the number of playoff teams, I'd just take the top 4 from each division. 16 in. 16 out. A couple of the eastern conference match-ups would be the same.

It's not feasible for a league with a third more teams than 33 years ago to say play your division 8 times. I don't think we can expect that. Play the 7 teams in your division 4 times and the other 25 teams twice. It's 78 games. Knocks a week off the season, which wouldn't hurt. And, you still weight the schedule towards playing in your own division.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

I do wonder if people would think differently about how many teams should be in the playoffs if in the 1970s the number of teams in had never expanded beyond 8, and that had continued throughout the 1980s.

Obviou$ly, there are rea$on$ why the playoff$ in other league$ have 16 team$ and it make$ it $o at lea$t half the team$ in the league $ucceed in making the playoff$, but .... damn it, I can't think of any of them at the moment.

Can anyone explain to me how you tell the difference between a team tanking and a team that trades off its vets for draft capital during a rebuild? Because afaik the latter seems to be fine but what specifically do tanking teams do differently than team just selling off vets for a rebuild?

Or is the message here that bad/mediocre teams should just keep re-signing their aging vets forever hoping they will one day not be bad/mediocre?

It's all tanking, and bad/mediocre teams should hang on to every player at all costs to protect the integrity of the sport. And when they do, they should be rewarded in some way.

And then, 2 years later, when no one is trading anyone because they're all "protecting the integrity of the sport" the same people will have "solutions" to "fix" the trade deadline to "make it more exciting."

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

Is tanking even that big of an issue? Who's the last team that tanked? By the nature of the League someone is going to finish last.

 

[Beukeboom Fan]

It was 1v8 even when the league had under 30 teams. Now we have 32 and probably going to 34 sometime soon.
Makes sense to create a Play-In tournament at this point imo, specially considering that that aligns with what owners seem to want based on my understanding.
As for the lottery, I’m with you. My proposition completely eliminates the lottery and creates a competitive tournament to earn those first 2 picks.
I think we’re aligned

Strongly disagree with this. All the play-in tournaments does is de-value the regular season and you have undeserving teams having a chance for the P/O's. Does anyone feel bad for the Blues or Wild in the WC? Or the Wings or Flyers in the EC? Are those "high quality" teams that deserve to be in the P/O's?

And also disagree that there is a problem with "tanking". Right now - if you're the worst team in the league you only have a 25% chance of getting the 1st OA, so there is significantly less incentive for a team to truly "tank". YMMV.

 

[Beukeboom Fan]

Worst teams deserve the best prospects.

I could be talked into expanded playoffs and some form of play-in though. More revenue for teams and players.

Not sure how this hasn't happened yet to be honest.

Agree on the prospects.

With the play-in though - do we want to make the season even longer? And do we want to de-value the regular season games by simply lowering the bar for "play-off contention"? The NBA did that and then they had to institute a regular season tournament to incent the players to give a crap about the regular season. (100% understand there are more than just the play-in tournament in the NBA which impacts the player engagement.)

Which team in the 9/10 range do you feel is being "shortchanged" by not making the play-off's? IMO - the NHL doesn't lose anything by not having them involved in the play-off's.