That's my thing. Knock it off with the Wildcard stuff.
I get one division has 1 less team, but who gives a crap. That is going to be balanced out with Seattle.
I don't care about playing Boston, that's not my issue. It's that Boston and Toronto, despite having better seasons, will get a harder match-up in each other, than Montreal will. It doesn't make sense.
Change the scheduling to where you play divisional teams more (don't need to play Western teams twice every season) and then the top 4 teams in the division make it.
Simple, Simple, Simple.
I really like Divisional Playoff concept. I like it more than Conference seeding. But the way the NHL does it is so ****ed up
they already play more games vs there division then anyone else. you also can't play the west only once, they did that back after the lockout and teams complained they only got to see Crosby/Ovie once every 2 years. there never going to go back to that, the only real thing you could go is play the Metro only twice and then once more vs your division but that makes it an 81 game schedule not 82. or could be 83 once Seattle joins.
the reason people don't like it is because they looking league wide at points and believe they're an accurate representation of the quality of the teams, but don't realize that just because a team has more points it means there the better team, when teams in other division and especially conference have extremely different schedules, like last year we played 18 games vs the bottom 5 teams and 4 times vs the top 2 in points, while Minnesota who finished 4 points behind us played the bottom 5 teams only 11 times and played the top 2 teams 9 times. that will have an affect on your points. I don't think alot of people realize this. the other teams in our division are the only teams who play a comparable schedule so we should play them in the playoffs imo. the divisional format is excellent.
lastly anyone who thinks it looks bad on the NHL to have two excellent teams playing in the first round I think has it wrong. the NHL probably enjoys it because it gives them a marquis match up in Round 1 which they might not always have.
Edit: btw I would leave the cross over but only cross over when 5th place is better then the other 4th. if the wildcard teams are 1 from each division they should stay in there division regardless of standing.