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Puck Daddy Bag of Mail: Tweaking the playoff format

The current playoff format could disadvantage the Predators who figure to run into a strong Jets team earlier than they’d like. (Getty Images)
The current playoff format could disadvantage the Predators who figure to run into a strong Jets team earlier than they’d like. (Getty Images)

It’s awards season at this point. Most playoff races are decided, most good teams are resting players, and most bad teams are already starting to at least think about packing up the stall for the summer.

So you can forgive people if they really don’t care much about the last 10-13 games their teams are scheduled to play here. Very few teams are playing for anything worth anything, and it’s mostly just players taking runs at point- and goalscoring titles. (In the games on Tuesday night, a few guys really emptied the tanks; Brad Marchand and Nikita Kucherov each had three points, Erik Karlsson had two to pull within three points of the league lead among defensemen with six fewer games played than the leader.)

But perhaps most interesting this week was Pierre LeBrun asking a bunch of GMs if they want to expand the playoffs when Seattle gets its team. They predictably said yes (for obvious, job-preservation-related reasons) and everyone groaned. There’s really that little to talk about at this point.

So here are a bunch of questions that have little to do with the rest of the season. Let’s roll:

Megan asks: “If you could make a single change to the playoff seeding system, what would it be?”

Pretty obvious here, but if we’re sticking with the 16-team format — and we absolutely should not! — then you go No. 1 vs. No. 16, No. 2 vs. No. 15, and so on and so forth.

The NBA, a league run with plenty of competence versus the NHL’s complete lack thereof, is reportedly considering just such a move because it recognizes how fundamentally flawed the current 1-8 East/West format is. That, also, is a league without ties and loser points, which helps to uncloud how big the gaps there are for Nos. 1 and 8. The NHL at least gets to pretend because of its very dumb points system that this isn’t an issue.

There are, as Adam Silver points out, plenty of issues with this; in the NHL, if Tampa is the No. 1 team and, say, Calgary is the No. 16, they might be at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to travel versus a No. 2 like Nashville facing a No. 15 like Columbus. Then you have to build extra days into the schedule, the playoffs take even longer, etc.

But I think that’s probably the fairest way to handle this overall. Certainly everyone in the world thinks the current format sucks. But I think there should also be a 60-game regular season, so the NHL doesn’t want to hear my ideas on this.

Raul asks: “Which team will be the worst to make the Conference Finals this year?”

Speaking of the very bad playoff format, it basically guarantees at least one relatively weak team makes the Conference Finals every year. See: Senators, Ottawa.

This year, I think the pretty obvious answer is whichever team comes out of the Pacific, because I don’t see Dallas as being a particularly big impediment for Vegas in the first round (if that is who they end up facing) and I think the 2-3 matchup in the Pacific isn’t gonna produce a great competitor either.

The fact that you’re just gonna have Nashville and Winnipeg hitting each other in the ribs with aluminum baseball bats for six or seven games seems wildly unfair to both the fans and those teams, but that’s what we have to live with.

I don’t think any of the four or five legit contenders for the Eastern Conference Final (Tampa, Boston, Pittsburgh, Toronto, and maybe Philly all seem plausible here) would be illegitimate.

Ashmead asks: “Why do NHL teams recall players for a few hours (e.g. Dylan Strome)?”

In the case of Dylan Strome, that was an emergency call-up in case Derek Stepan couldn’t go that night (I want to say on Monday?) but it turned out Stepan was healthy enough to dress so they sent Strome back down with an eye toward giving him a runout over the last eight or 10 games.

But the reason I picked this question was because about a week ago, I saw a bit of confusion on Twitter about a few teams sending down young roster players then recalling them shortly thereafter. This was on the AHL roster deadline day, so it behooved players to “send down” guys on two-way contracts so they would be eligible for the Calder Cup playoffs. These were purely paper transactions to ensure that even if teams were eliminated from Stanley Cup contention, their 22-year-olds (or whatever) could still get as many playoff games as possible.

Just a quick explainer but in a lot of cases, those are the two reasons teams would rapidly move players back and forth between the AHL and NHL.

Dana asks: “Why isn’t the recent influx of First Nations players such as Bear, Whitecloud, Montour etc. a bigger deal?”

There’s no real good answer to this question, I’m afraid. I think part of it is certainly that many of them do not appear as though they are of a different race (many have Western names, etc.), but also because there has been an increased presence of First Nations players in the league for some time now.

While there were only a handful active native players on NHL rosters to start the season (including Carey Price and TJ Oshie, among others), the call-up of Ethan Bear and signing of Zach Whitecloud added a lot to that number, proportionally.

The league can and should certainly do more to help native players — especially in remote parts of Canada — get access to affordable hockey. Otherwise you hear the stories about Jonathan Cheechoo (I think) taking a long helicopter ride multiple times a week just to get some ice time with other kids. I know a number of native players who made a good living in the league have certainly made those kinds of efforts, but given that there are so few, those efforts can only go so far.

As with the question of why aren’t there more black players in the league, it seems like the answer is “opportunity,” and that leads to a lot of uncomfortable questions about inclusivity if Hockey Is, indeed, For Everyone.

Pokecheque asks: “What would be your ideal fix for the NHL draft lottery?”

Well as long as we’re asking how I would fix the league, I would say there is no NHL draft and players are free to sign with whichever teams they like as they enter the league. Of course, you can impose limits on how many players a team can have on entry-level deals as a means of curtailing any handful of clubs from stockpiling elite players.

Drafts are anti-competitive and as a capital-L Labor guy, it’s unfair to enforce where players are able to work so tightly. I’d also get rid of restricted free agency, but that’s a different subject entirely.

Anyway, I don’t think you need to fix the concept of the draft lottery. I’m all for tanking to get the best guy. I can see why most people are not, but I am unmoored from the sport’s toxic cultural mores.

If you think tanking is a problem, I’d probably tweak the odds a bit so maybe every team has the same chance regardless of whether they finish two or 40 points out of the playoffs. That would create chaos and chaos is funny.

Rebecca asks: “When the (hopefully) new Seattle NHL team starts playing, they’ll have a natural rivalry with Vancouver but the NHL seems to like smooshing together random teams for ‘rivalry night.’ What manufactured rivalries can you see the NHL pushing for Seattle?”

They’re for-sure going to be in a rivalry with Vegas as the two most recent expansion teams. That’s not even negotiable.

Otherwise, you probably have to look to other sports for rivalry inspiration. The Seahawks also have a long-standing rivalry with the 49ers, and that’s close enough to lump the Sharks in. The Sonics used to have a big rivalry with the Lakers so maybe you say the Kings.

The real answer to this is “Whatever NHL team moves to Oklahoma City soon” but y’know.

Jones asks: “How would you alter the salary cap?”

I think the cap works pretty well for what it is, as it stands right now. I might incentivize teams to get better at drafting and developing by giving them a slight discount on re-signing players that made their NHL debuts with the clubs. I’ve seen people propose a 50 percent drop but that’s preposterous; imagine giving the Oilers Connor McDavid for $6.25 million AAV next year? FOH.

But if you wanna say 10 percent? Even 20 percent? I have a lot of time for that.

I might also add some mid-level exceptions like they have in the NBA, just to encourage a little more of a middle class in NHL salaries.

Plus it seems fine to let NHL teams retain as much salary as they want, but put a limit on how much of their cap obligations it can account for.

Those are the big ones for me but I’m sure I could come up with more if I really put my mind to it.

Stephen asks: “What college free agents do I want on my team?”

I’m not going to get into this too much (naming players, etc.) because I’ve answered this same question at least three times this season, including literally last week. Go back through the archives.

But the reason I’m answering this one is simple: To plead with you not to get your hopes up. The number of college free agents who really and truly become something in the NHL is pretty small, but there’s a sweepstakes or three every year. This leads to people dramatically overrating players, like say oh I don’t know just to choose a random example from the recent past who got insanely overrated and everyone shouted at me for saying he wasn’t that good but I ended up being right, Jimmy Vesey.

How much did I say to people, “Do NOT get super-excited about Jimmy Vesey?” How much did those people tell me to take a walk? How many goals does Jimmy Vesey have in 147 career games at almost 25 years old? It’s just 31.

Similar “sweepstakes” were held for Christian Folin (173 career games), Matt Gilroy (225 games), Matt O’Connor (1 game), Spencer Foo (0 career games), Danny DeKeyser (368 games, but he’s really bad), Justin Schultz (395 games but he had to change cities before people stopped throwing garbage at him on the streets), etc.

There are success stories: Kevin Hayes, Torey Krug, Chris Kunitz, Tyler Bozak, etc. But with the exception of Hayes, who simply let his draft rights with Chicago expire, what do a lot of those guys have in common? Yeah, they’re undersized, “late bloomers,” or both, that’s correct.

A lot of NCAA free agents aren’t “late bloomers” so much as they never really bloom into being real NHL players, and that’s totally fine, but let’s just try to be realistic. Any guy your team gets at this time of year is a free asset who has a max ceiling of Chris Kunitz or Tyler Bozak. These aren’t bad players, but they’re not even close to being superstars.

Adjust your expectations accordingly.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

All stats via Corsica unless noted otherwise.