2020 Central Division Champions!

[TheDizee]

Congrats Blues!

Click to read more...

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

It means nothing. They could end up as the 4th seed after the round robin. And if they do end up with the top seed, they will get "home ice" advantage by having the last change, period.

But do we get a banner? Western Conference Regular Season Champs.

 

[CoMoBlues]

It means nothing. They could end up as the 4th seed after the round robin. And if they do end up with the top seed, they will get "home ice" advantage by having the last change, period.

But do we get a banner? Western Conference Regular Season Champs.

Meh, better than Nashville’s “banner”.

 

[Brian39]

It means nothing. They could end up as the 4th seed after the round robin. And if they do end up with the top seed, they will get "home ice" advantage by having the last change, period.

But do we get a banner? Western Conference Regular Season Champs.

I can't imagine that the Blues are thrilled about the NHL making the round-robin-seeding-tournament a clean slate instead of offering some weighted advantage based on regular season standings. Given that, I think it would be hilarious if the Blues don't get the top seed in the playoffs but still put up a sarcastic Western Conference Champs banner.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

I can't imagine that the Blues are thrilled about the NHL making the round-robin-seeding-tournament a clean slate instead of offering some weighted advantage based on regular season standings. Given that, I think it would be hilarious if the Blues don't get the top seed in the playoffs but still put up a sarcastic Western Conference Champs banner.

I assume they’ll reseed after the play-in series are over. If that’s the case, I don’t see much difference between the 1 and the 4 seed. Both options avoid playing Colorado, Dallas and Vegas in the 1st round. That’s better than they would have had if they’d been pipped by Colorado and ended up 2nd in the conference and division.

I don’t see much difference in the seeding of those bottom 8/4 teams after the preliminary round. They’re all teams we’d expect the Blues to beat in a best of 7 if the Blues are a contender.

 

[Brian39]

I assume they’ll reseed after the play-in series are over. If that’s the case, I don’t see much difference between the 1 and the 4 seed. Both options avoid playing Colorado, Dallas and Vegas in the 1st round. That’s better than they would have had if they’d been pipped by Colorado and ended up 2nd in the conference and division.

I don’t see much difference in the seeding of those bottom 8/4 teams after the preliminary round. They’re all teams we’d expect the Blues to beat in a best of 7 if the Blues are a contender.

They have not decided on a bracket vs re-seeding. In the video, Bettman talked about how the league prefers a bracket for a variety of reasons but that the players prefer re-seeding and that is a conversation that needs to take place between the league and the players. I think a bracket is stupid when you have all 12 teams in the same city, but it's what the NHL wants. If they go for a bracket, then trying to predict which seed is the best is a complete guessing game. However, I think the players care about this issue more than the league and will ultimately get their way on it.

If they reseed after each round, then I disagree that there isn't much difference between the 4 top seeds. Being a 1 or 2 seed means that you likely open up vs a team like Chicago/Arizona/Minnesota/Calgary/Winnipeg while being a 3 or 4 seed likely means that that you open up against one of Edmonton/Vancouver/Nashville. Give me a team out of that first group instead of the 2nd group every day of the week. I ignore the 8/9 matchup when I talk about "upsets," so there are 3 potential upsets in the qualifying round (10 over 7, 11 over 6, and 12 over 5).

No Upsets:
1 vs Calgary or Winnipeg
2 vs Vancouver
3 vs Nashville
4 vs Edmonton

1 Upset:
1 vs Minnesota, Arizona or Chicago
2 vs Winnipeg or Calgary
3 vs Nashville or Vancouver
4 vs Edmonton or Nashville

2 Upsets:
1 vs Arizona or Chicago
2 vs Minnesota or Arizona
3 vs Winnipeg or Calgary
4 vs Edmonton, Nashville or Vancouver

3 Upsets:
1 vs Chicago
2 vs Arizona
3 vs Minnesota
4 vs Calgary/Winnipeg

I being the 1 or 2 seed is noticeably better than being the 3 or 4 seed in all 4 of those scenarios (except possibly the 2 seed in a world where there are no upsets).

But even bigger than the 1st round opponent is who you face in the second round. If the 1 and/or 2 seed makes it to the 2nd round, they have a pretty good chance of avoiding having to play Colorado, Dallas or Vegas in the 2nd round. If you are the 1 seed, you avoid all of those teams if there are any upsets in the 1st round. If you are the 2 seed, you avoid all of those teams in the second round if the 1 seed loses OR there are 2 upsets in the 1st round. If you are the 3 or 4 seed, you need two of the seeds ahead of you to get upset in order to avoid that group. The odds of having to play someone in that group in the 2nd round are substantially higher if you are a 3 or 4 seed than if you are a 1 or 2 seed.

A likely path if we're 1/2 seed is Minnesota/Arizona and then Nashville/Vancouver/Edmonton

A likely path if we're a 3/4 seed is Nashville/Vancouver/Edmonton and then Colorado/Dallas/Vegas

I don't think any of these paths are harder than the path we were likely to get in the "old" division format, one of them looks a hell of a lot better to me in the format we are using. I'll be annoyed if Dallas or Vegas gets that easier path based on a 3 game round robin even though we had a nearly insurmountable 8+ points lead on both of them with a dozen games left in the season. I think it is silly that this system treats a team with 82 points at the stoppage equally to a team with 94 points at the stoppage. IMO, that 12 point difference should count for more than a tiebreak at the end of a "start on equal footing" round robin. It's not the end of the world and it isn't enough that I want to scrap the entire thing. I'm very excited by the prospect of this tournament and the winner will be a legitimate Cup champ in my mind (again, I'm assuming best of 7 in all rounds). But it is enough of a complaint that I'd be grumbling if I were the Blues. I'd find it hilarious if the Blues passive aggressively hung a "Western Conference Champs!" banner and streamed it online 10 minutes before the start of our opening round game where we are the 3 or 4 seed.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

They won’t reseed after each round. That’s extreme and no one has even proposed it.

 

[Brockon]

They won’t reseed after each round. That’s extreme and no one has even proposed it.

Come again?

Here's a screenshot of the Bettman presser that says exactly that... They're undecided if they will reseed after each round.

Discussed at the 7:00 min mark.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

Thanks, I hadn’t seen that. I can’t imagine why they’d introduce re-seeding round to round. Why not just hew to the normal structure, after the preliminary round is over.

 

[MissouriMook]

Thanks, I hadn’t seen that. I can’t imagine why they’d introduce re-seeding round to round. Why not just hew to the normal structure, after the preliminary round is over.

Reseeding after each round is the normal structure they used when the playoffs were conference based, before they went back to divisional. It would be inconsistent NOT to do it TBH.