Tracking the Blues’ Stanley Cup Quest: 2020 version [aka "Repeat the Feat"] (LOL) (3/12 - On hold)

Stupendous Yappi

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Sadly, I think this may become irrelevant. The magic number to win the division/conference is 23.
The Blues are closer on the tiebreaker with Colorado, but it still goes to them.

I fear we’ve seen the last of NHL hockey for a while.

The point of canceling stuff like this is to spread out the timing of the virus spread. Realistically, it will go through every community. But if it can be spread over a longer time, then resourced like ICUs are more able to help. So I’m hoping maybe the season will be put on pause and resumed after a few weeks...maybe a month.

I think there is a chance they cancel some games if they do that. Playoff races would be changed dramatically. It will probably be unfair to some teams. Of course, maybe they’ll just cancel it outright and we’ll keep the Cup. Or maybe they would award it to Boston for the regular season record?
 

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Sadly, I think this may become irrelevant. The magic number to win the division/conference is 23.
The Blues are closer on the tiebreaker with Colorado, but it still goes to them.

I fear we’ve seen the last of NHL hockey for a while.

The point of canceling stuff like this is to spread out the timing of the virus spread. Realistically, it will go through every community. But if it can be spread over a longer time, then resourced like ICUs are more able to help. So I’m hoping maybe the season will be put on pause and resumed after a few weeks...maybe a month.

I think there is a chance they cancel some games if they do that. Playoff races would be changed dramatically. It will probably be unfair to some teams. Of course, maybe they’ll just cancel it outright and we’ll keep the Cup. Or maybe they would award it to Boston for the regular season record?
I don’t think they’ll award Boston the Cup, or at least they shouldn’t. Give them the President’s Trophy for sure but I don’t see how they could put any one team on the Cup if they don’t play playoffs. I think the rest of the regular season is done, almost certainly. Playoffs could maybe be pushed back but that would have a whole host of implications for the draft, free agency and in to next year. I fear we’ve seen the Blues take the ice for the last time until next fall personally.
 

Stupendous Yappi

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I don’t think they’ll award Boston the Cup, or at least they shouldn’t. Give them the President’s Trophy for sure but I don’t see how they could put any one team on the Cup if they don’t play playoffs. I think the rest of the regular season is done, almost certainly. Playoffs could maybe be pushed back but that would have a whole host of implications for the draft, free agency and in to next year. I fear we’ve seen the Blues take the ice for the last time until next fall personally.
I think it’s most likely a 30 day hiatus will occur for sports leagues. Covid19 will still be around, but the threat of an overwhelming number of cases all at once will have lessened, and infrastructure like easy availability of testing will be in place. Perhaps that’s optimistic, but I think it’s pretty realistic.

Assume for a moment that’s the case. What will the league do? I think they’ll try to play the rest of the schedule and push everything back. I don’t think they’d outright cancel games if it’s a 30 day pause. But that is a logistical nightmare to sort out the arenas. However, everything else is canceled too...and they have that month to work on rescheduling. That’s what I’m hoping for.

‘It works out well for teams like Colorado, who are injured. And for Tarasenko, it buys an extra month of rehab. But there is the league wide challenge of staying fit and being ready to play sharp hockey after time off. The schedule after such a break will be frenetic and intense. Could be pretty fun when it returns.

Some players will catch it along the way, just like some have caught the flu this season. The Blues just dealt with a virus running through the team. It could just as easily have been Covid19.
 

Ted Hoffman

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No idea what the league will do. None. If we're back in say 2 weeks, we could just pick up the schedule as it sat and then see how games from March 12-then get fit after the end. We might play all 82, we might just try to get to where everyone has the same number of games played, we might just try to get to "same # of GP for all playoff-contending teams." We might just roll into the playoffs in some way. We might have some kind of playoff format for teams who were reasonably in playoff contention. And, if this rolls past July 1 there's implications on how it impacts the offseason because free agency obviously can't start then.

No idea. There's a lot of logistics that are going to have to get worked out, and everyone is going to have to be on the same page - but first and foremost, we're going to have to figure out when things could possibly crank back up.
 

mk80

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I think it’s most likely a 30 day hiatus will occur for sports leagues. Covid19 will still be around, but the threat of an overwhelming number of cases all at once will have lessened, and infrastructure like easy availability of testing will be in place. Perhaps that’s optimistic, but I think it’s pretty realistic.

Assume for a moment that’s the case. What will the league do? I think they’ll try to play the rest of the schedule and push everything back. I don’t think they’d outright cancel games if it’s a 30 day pause. But that is a logistical nightmare to sort out the arenas. However, everything else is canceled too...and they have that month to work on rescheduling. That’s what I’m hoping for.

‘It works out well for teams like Colorado, who are injured. And for Tarasenko, it buys an extra month of rehab. But there is the league wide challenge of staying fit and being ready to play sharp hockey after time off. The schedule after such a break will be frenetic and intense. Could be pretty fun when it returns.

Some players will catch it along the way, just like some have caught the flu this season. The Blues just dealt with a virus running through the team. It could just as easily have been Covid19.

I think as long as the first wave of cases hits with minimum impact to the health systems we'll be fine in the future. Hopefully that happens on the quicker side of the timeline. On NHL Network they had said probably the league would give teams a short tune up training period before playing games so I think a week or 2 extra tacked onto however long the actual suspension lasts. Hopefully this all ends as quick as it came and we are playing hockey towards mid to late April or early May.
 
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Ranksu

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All I can say thank God Perron, ROR and get a bit rest. They really looked like out gas last 1 month. + Tarasenko can be 100% health.
 

Davimir Tarablad

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Defense currently on hold
 
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Brockon

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I’m hoping for a one month hiatus maybe. But how do teams stay sharp during a break like this?

Obviously my training is a different situation, but they just closed the national training centre due to COVID-19 concerns.

Everyone was told we were being flown home in the next 2 days. My take on that is they want to fly everyone home before air travel becomes more hazardous to our health and/or airlines shutdown temporarily.

The hope is that aftera minimum 9f 4 weeks, we'd be brought back to resume training - but they didn't give us any further information...

I'd assume if a large scale international company is taking that approach, with a 4 week minimum - the NHL would likely take a similar stance. You can chalk that up to wanting to lessen the load on ICUs, lessen large scale infection risk to their assets, protection of the general public (the users)...
 
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BlueDream

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I personally believe the season will end up getting canceled, and they wouldn't award a Cup winner if that was the case. That would give us the opportunity to go 2 whole years defending the Cup, which would be cool, but obviously these circumstances suck. Again this is my prediction as of now. I am hoping for the best though.
 
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Robb_K

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I have faith that AT THE VERY LEAST, an abbreviated playoffs, and awarding of The Stanley Cup will occur. If we're lucky, some regular season games will be played - enough to have all the playoff contenders end up having played an equal number, and a full schedule of 7-game playoff series will also be played. I doubt that all 82 games will be played.
 

Brian39

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I'll be honest.

If the playoffs require anything less than 16 wins to lift the Cup, I will always look at this year's winner with an asterisk by their name. Logically, I understand that it hasn't always taken 16 wins and that it is hypocritical for me not to view all the teams prior to 1987 with that same asterisk. But sports aren't always logical and frankly I have a hard time comparing modern hockey to the hockey of the 70s anyway. I was born in 1987, so every NHL playoff of my lifetime has required 16 wins. Having a non-16 game winner sandwiched in between dozens of 16 game winners on the Cup just feels wrong.

I think I'd prefer a blank spot like we have for the 2004/05 season than a shortened playoffs.
 
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BlueDream

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I'll be honest.

If the playoffs require anything less than 16 wins to lift the Cup, I will always look at this year's winner with an asterisk by their name. Logically, I understand that it hasn't always taken 16 wins and that it is hypocritical for me not to view all the teams prior to 1987 with that same asterisk. But sports aren't always logical and frankly I have a hard time comparing modern hockey to the hockey of the 70s anyway. I was born in 1987, so every NHL playoff of my lifetime has required 16 wins. Having a non-16 game winner sandwiched in between dozens of 16 game winners on the Cup just feels wrong.

I think I'd prefer a blank spot like we have for the 2004/05 season than a shortened playoffs.
Without a doubt. I don't even want the playoffs to happen if there's no fans at the games either. People can debate about how much impact the fans have, but it just wouldn't be the same. Would not like it.

I love hockey as much as anyone but if they can't get everything back to normal, then I don't think there's anything wrong with completely resetting and making sure things start on time for the 20-21 season.

And that's truly the most plausible option. I mean can you imagine if the playoffs did start in a month or 2 and then certain teams were affected because someone important on their team got the virus? I don't even want to deal with all that. That's bound to happen and some teams would get screwed by it. There's just too many obstacles, IMO, for resuming to make any sense. Things would have to drastically change.
 

simon IC

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I live in the Greater Toronto Area. I have to say, the sense of despondency is just about ... palpable. There is nothing to watch ... it's like people don't know where to look. I really drives home to me how much a big a deal hockey is in Canadian lives. I am in no way suggesting Americans miss hockey any less. I am just saying that this is ... weird. It is like somebody pressed a big, cosmic pause button, and nobody knows what to do with themselves. I have never experienced anything like this before.
 
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Klank Loves You

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I live in the Greater Toronto Area. I have to say, the sense of despondency is just about ... palpable. There is nothing to watch ... it's like people don't know where to look. I really drives home to me how much a big a deal hockey is in Canadian lives. I am in no way suggesting Americans miss hockey any less. I am just saying that this is ... weird. It is like somebody pressed a pause button, and nobody knows what to do with themselves. I have never experienced anything like this before.
This is the way I feel when I end up at the refrigerator, staring at nothing as I let all the cold out.
 

Brian39

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Looooong post because I have come up with the solution to jump (almost) straight into playoffs without having to base the standings on points percentage. If we hit a point where you can only play a full playoffs by skipping the remaining regular season, there is going to be hand wringing about the differences in games played. Teams out of the hunt (or trailing division seeds) with fewer games played will argue that you have to use points percentage. Teams with more points but more games played will argue that actually banking points is more reliable than points percentage. This analysis/proposal gets all teams who are currently within "games in hand striking distance" from each other onto the same number of games played, so the NHL could use pure points without punishing teams with fewer GP.

The Caps/Flyers/Pens have all played 69 games and no one else in the metro can catch them by the 69 game mark. Metro 1-3 can be seeded where they are.

Same with Boston/Tampa/Toronto. 70 games played and Florida can't catch up with their game in hand. Atlantic 1-3 can be seeded where they are.

The Wild card in the East is trickier. Carolina at WC1 has 81 point in 68 games. Columbus has 81 points in 70 games and the Isles have 80 points in 68 games. No one else could hit 81 points in 70 games. Solution: Carolina and the Isles play a 2 game home-and-home. That puts all 3 teams at 70 games played, top 2 teams earn playoff spots.

So you can fairly seed the East with 2 total games played. The West is harder. 1-3 in each division isn't locked in and Vancouver could climb from out of a spot to either a wild card spot or the 3rd spot in the Pacific Division. Also, For Nashville to be on an even GP pace w/ Winnipeg for a Wild Card spot, they could theoretically catch Dallas. Here are the standings of relevant teams for reference since this is complicated:

Defending Stanley Cup Champion St. Louis Blues: 94 points in 71 games played.
Avs: 92 points in 70 games
Dallas: 82 points in 69 games

Vegas: 86 points in 71 games
Edmonton 83 points in 71 games
Calgary: 79 points in 70 games

Winnipeg: 80 points in 71 games
Nashville: 78 points in 69 games
Vancouver: 78 in 69 games
Minnesota: 77 points in 69 games

We need to get everyone to 71 games played.

St. Louis, Vegas, Edmonton, and Winnipeg have already played 71 games. They don't play any games.

Colorado needs to play 1 game
Dallas needs to play 2 games.
Nashville needs to play 2 games.
Vancouver needs to play 2 games.
Minnesota needs to play 2 games
Calgary needs to play 1 game.

That's 5 total games that need to get played to get all the relevant teams in the West to the same number of games played. We can debate the best way to determine who plays who, but I think just random selection is the way to go.

So there you go. 7 total games played league wide and every single team with the potential to alter their playoff seed will end up with the same number of games played as the teams they are competing with. And since no team has to play more than 2 games, you could get this done in 3 nights without anyone having to play a back to back.

If we get to a point where there is just no way to play a good number of regular season games and a full playoffs, I'm fine if the league just says "we're switching to points percentage to determine who makes the playoffs." But if that causes too much whining, this would be the quickest way to let the NHL seed playoffs by pure points instead of points percentage. Every team in the league who hasn't been mathematically eliminated opens a mini-camp on "day 1." These games take place on days 5 and day 7, you can be playing playoff hockey by day 9. Condense the mini camp a day and remove a day of rest and you are down to exactly one week between "safe to play" and "start of playoffs."
 
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Robb_K

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I live in the Greater Toronto Area. I have to say, the sense of despondency is just about ... palpable. There is nothing to watch ... it's like people don't know where to look. I really drives home to me how much a big a deal hockey is in Canadian lives. I am in no way suggesting Americans miss hockey any less. I am just saying that this is ... weird. It is like somebody pressed a pause button, and nobody knows what to do with themselves. I have never experienced anything like this before.

I know the feeling!
 
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Robb_K

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Without a doubt. I don't even want the playoffs to happen if there's no fans at the games either. People can debate about how much impact the fans have, but it just wouldn't be the same. Would not like it.

I love hockey as much as anyone but if they can't get everything back to normal, then I don't think there's anything wrong with completely resetting and making sure things start on time for the 20-21 season.

And that's truly the most plausible option. I mean can you imagine if the playoffs did start in a month or 2 and then certain teams were affected because someone important on their team got the virus? I don't even want to deal with all that. That's bound to happen and some teams would get screwed by it. There's just too many obstacles, IMO, for resuming to make any sense. Things would have to drastically change.

The Blues are one of the 3 best teams, and defending champs. I'd settle for winning The Cup even if there are less than 16 wins for the winner. I don't want them to lose this chance. How many years in the last 50 have they been the favourite, or among the top few teams??? The win won't be tainted even if they play one series less. The best will be playing the best. Some NHL players are always getting injured and sick. Why should catching this virus during a pause in the schedule make things unfair? Top players getting sick during the run for the playoffs or during the playoffs almost always hurts teams. ALL teams have to deal with such unlucky breaks. We can't undo that unfair break every season. So why should we prevent that unfair break now, by not having a championship? If the top teams play one less series, or all series are best of 5 games, the winner will still have played more regular season games and more playoff games than ALL teams before 1967-68. I say they'll have beat the proper teams to deserve the championship, and also will have won enough games to deserve it.
 
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Ted Hoffman

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We need to get everyone to 71 games played.
You won't be able to do this at 71. You'll have to get them to 72 or some other even number.

With 31 teams in the league, 15 games played leaves you with 30 teams with 1 GP and someone who hasn't played a game. Another 15 games played (making sure whoever didn't play in the first 15 plays here) leaves you with 2 teams who haven't played 2 games; you'd need a 16th game between those two teams to get them to 2 GP like everyone else. Carry that forward.

I'm skipping a whole lot of other questions that fall out of here, because I don't want to get into refuting points because no one has fully vetted out everything to exhaustion. But I'll just say that even getting to the same # of GP raises a whole lot of other questions that need to be figured out.
 

Stupendous Yappi

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You won't be able to do this at 71. You'll have to get them to 72 or some other even number.

With 31 teams in the league, 15 games played leaves you with 30 teams with 1 GP and someone who hasn't played a game. Another 15 games played (making sure whoever didn't play in the first 15 plays here) leaves you with 2 teams who haven't played 2 games; you'd need a 16th game between those two teams to get them to 2 GP like everyone else. Carry that forward.

I'm skipping a whole lot of other questions that fall out of here, because I don't want to get into refuting points because no one has fully vetted out everything to exhaustion. But I'll just say that even getting to the same # of GP raises a whole lot of other questions that need to be figured out.
Right, you can’t just do the playoff contenders, because lottery odds and draft position are also affected...or at least they’re a strong reason to include everyone.

I think the pressure to recoup the revenue would make nonplayoff teams be just as likely to schedule additional games.
 

Ted Hoffman

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Right, you can’t just do the playoff contenders, because lottery odds and draft position are also affected...or at least they’re a strong reason to include everyone.

I think the pressure to recoup the revenue would make nonplayoff teams be just as likely to schedule additional games.
It really depends on when (if) we get back to playing games again. The longer this takes, the more likely we just roll right into the playoffs - and if we get to that point, I suspect the league will just say for the playoffs, "we're taking teams based on point% when we stopped playing," and for draft order, also rely on point % to set preliminary slotting for a lottery.

So many things that need to be sorted out, no matter how this ends up going - and until we get clarity on which way it's going, planning is all speculation.
 

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