Wild Card Playoff Format - worth it?

[Meds]

What I like is that, at least for the first round, chances are your opponent will be geographically close cutting down on travel and early games for us westerners.

Not that it evens things out for every team but we won't have a Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis road to the Cup!

Good point, I hadn't thought about the travel. Personally I really like the idea of more divisional matchups in the 1st round, so this new system bridges equality in the standings with the divisional rivalries. I mean, it would suck to see a couple of teams in the playoffs while 2 teams from another division miss out despite having more wins and points.....if you recall the old Southeast Division. I hated seeing Carolina seeded in 3rd when they had the same, or fewer, number of points as the 8th placed seed. This system is OK, although I would like to see it written that if the wildcard teams are from separate divisions, match them up against the top team in their own division regardless of 1/2 7/8 placing.

While we're at it, why a Regulation and OT wins more valuable than a Shootout win? Aren't we supposed to buy in to the league mentality that the shootout is part of the game now?

Well they should be more valuable because you should win/lose as a team not on individual skill of one aspect of the game, the shootout is a gimmick that has simply been instituted to keep games from ending in a tie.

I think the league has decidedly changed it's mentality, by possibly extending OT and going to a 3 on 3 format as well it seems they want to avoid shootout decisions as much as possible!

My problem with this issue is that the way they are doing it now is potentially saying that the loser point is more valuable than a shootout win. If LA manages to tie Winnipeg in points, they get the nod because of more ROW. However, they also have more OT/SO losses. 8 of their points have come from shootout losses, while only 5 of the Jets points have come from those. I think the way to do it would be to have simply have fewest loser points as the tie breaker since they are trying to reward the team win, just punish the team loss instead.

[Meds]

The problem being, what if there are 2 teams from the same division in both Wildcard spots like there is right now in the west?

What could make for an interesting first round rivalry is allowing the team that finishes with the highest point total choose their Wildcard opponent!! That would add some bitterness.

Are you saying that the higher placed wildcard team gets to choose? Or the conference leader (the team that finishes with the highest point total)?

The bitterness would be much greater with the latter scenario. Imagine how pissed off a team would be they got picked.....almost like saying, we'll take Team A, they'll be the easier opponent. Oh that would spark some shit.

[BurningBeard]

What could make for an interesting first round rivalry is allowing the team that finishes with the highest point total choose their Wildcard opponent!! That would add some bitterness.

Not the first time I've heard it, and I've always loved this idea. Let it apply to everyone in the conference. It lets the top seeded teams decide what sort of advantage they want (easy match up vs. travel), etc.

The shit that would get disturbed when the 1st place team picks the 5th seed because they've owned them during the regular season would be unbelievable.

[BurningBeard]

How would we feel about it if we were 5th in the West with 96 points and Winnipeg was 4th in the Central with 84 points, would we still be OK with it?

In theory, I agree with what you're saying. However, present day NHL as it is, there's so much parity that this is a rarity within a conference.