Once a Kings Fan Too
Joined: Jun. 2018
Posts: 39,682
Likes: 24,604
The NHL has suggested that it will resume and conclude the 2019-2020 season by abandoning the rest of the regular season (thereby setting up an interesting issue regarding the Lucic-Neal trade, among other conditional transactions) and go straight to a 24-team playoff after a three-week or longer training camp: the top 4 teams in each Conference will play a round-robin for seeding into round 2, while the middle 16 teams play an elimination round. This leaves 7 crummy teams on the outside looking in: the three California teams in the West, and Detroit, Ottawa, New Jersey and Buffalo in the East. I have two questions:
(1) What are the 7 outsiders going to do during the tournament? Doing nothing would result in a much longer-than-usual off-season for the players. How about a losers' bracket tourney, where the winner gets the 32nd pick in the draft in between the first and second rounds? How about a California Derby in the West, where the winners get to have burgers and hot dogs at the Governor's residence in Sacramento? Or how about a non-hockey competition like white-water rafting down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, winners get two weeks in Cabo San Lucas?
(2) Doesn't this suggest that the draft lottery/lotteries should be limited to the bottom 7 teams?