having a preseason CHL final-four tourney same as the NCAA basketball format. although you'd need 64 teams and you only have 58 chl teams, giving the two finalists in each league from the previous season a 1st round bye would even everything out. have a lottery to decide first round matchups. travel costs would be greatly reduced if you had say 4 "brackets" of 16, with each bracket playing all games in 4 different cities (same as NCAA), then move the final games to a final city.
although highly far-fetched, i think it would be intersting, seeing as you'd have interleague games and such.
