Joined: Jun. 2021
Posts: 2,196
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I've been thinking about this a lot lately and wanted to share a potential new format that the league could use.
Stage 1: Regular Season
From October to the end of February, the league should have a 62-game schedule where each team faces each other two times. This would be the most fair way to create a standing of 32 teams ranked from best to worst.
At the end of this 62 game "season" they can award the Presidents, Rocket, Jennings and any other trophy that is determined based solely on statistics. So non of the voting trophies just the stats based ones.
Break
After these 62 games (so last week of February/first week of March) the league should take a 1 week break. During this break they should have the all-star game, an awards ceremony for all the stats based trophies and the trade deadline. So all of this happens in one week, something like:
Friday: Skills Competitions
Saturday: All Star Game
Sunday: Awards
Monday Off
Tuesday Off
Wednesday Off
Thursday: Trade Deadline
Friday Off
Stage 2: Push for the playoffs
After that week off the last 20 games of the "season" are only played against division rivals. So you keep the standings as they are but you no longer play games against any teams outside your division. So you have 3 games against 6 divisional rivals and 2 games against 1 divisional rival.
This would give the league a chance to rebrand this with something like "Push for the Playoffs" or something like this to compete with March Madness and other events that cause a dip in viewership in March. It would also mean every team has 20 games each season post-deadline with their new acquisitions.
Since there is such a heavy emphasis on divisional play now. The Playoffs would also change with each division's top 4 teams making the playoffs in a simple 1v4 and 2v3 format.
Playoffs
So the first two rounds of the playoffs determine the winner of each division and they can create trophies for each division winner. When you get to the final 4 instead of having conferences, they can take the standings from the end of Stage 1 (so when everyone had played the exact same opposition in the exact same number of games) and re-seed 1v4 and 2v3. In the finals you can also pick home ice advantage based on the standings at the end of Stage 1.
Comments
Benefits:
1. I like the idea of having "equal" standings from everyone playing each other twice to determine seeding for the semi finals and finals of the playoffs.
2. The league has a weird emphasis on conferences given that there are very few cross conference rivalries. In short being in the East or West is really important but doesn't really impact much other than the wildcards and the third round of the playoffs. It makes more sense to either go to 2 conferences of 16 teams and use the 1-8 system is conferences matter or dump the conferences and stick to divisions. The fact we have both seems like a failure to let go of the past.
3. The last 20 games being against divisional rivals only helps with travel which every team should be happy about. It also makes those games much more important.
4. Having that week off means that the impact of the schedule from October to Feb/March is less important. Everyone will have played the same amount of games by then and then get a week off. You don't have teams with crammed/empty schedules towards the end of the season.
5. A fixed time for the deadline seems way overdue. Having it on a Thursday also removes a lot of the problems with Visas where players getting traded late on Friday cross border have to wait till Monday to file for a visa and often don't get with their new teams for a week.
6. Having stat based trophies awarded at that break when the schedule has been "equal" seems more fair and adds something of importance to the all-star ceremonies. It also means that there is less "awards talk" towards the end of the regular season and more focus on the playoffs. It would also make the Presidents feel more important if a team actually is awarded it and gets to celebrate it and stuff during this ceremony.
Let me know your thoughts... I feel this is a relatively minor change (more of a marketing tactic) that can drastically increase viewership, interest and fairness across the league.