Photo: NHL.com
The NHL’s General Managers are holding their annual meetings this week in Boca Raton, Florida. Absent from this year’s agenda is the current playoff format.
TSN’s Frank Seravalli reports from the meetings that the current playoff format will not be discussed. The playoff format won’t be a topic of conversation at this week’s annual GM meetings in South Florida. “It’s not on the agenda,” NHL senior executive vice-president Colin Campbell said Monday.
“I would say that there doesn’t appear to be a consensus or desire for change,” Daly said Monday. “The current system has done what it was intended to do. It’s emphasized and featured rivalries in early round matchups. And that has generated enhanced interest and better [television] ratings.”
Rather than utilizing a common sense approach, such as ranking teams one thru eight in each conference, then having first round matchups of one versus eight, two versus seven, three versus six and four versus five (which was used prior to 2013), the league has constructed the current playoff format to feature early round matchups between top teams, all for the sake of high-profile early round matchups. Some might say this marginalizes the meaning of the regular season.
So don’t look for any changes to the current playoff format anytime soon, and expect to keep seeing those second round series featuring Capitals-Penguins caliber matchups. By the way, the last three Stanley Cup Champions have come from the winner of the Penguins-Capitals second round series.
Jon Sorensen
The late Ted Lindsay called NHL leadership “a dictatorship” and that was sixty years ago in the Clarence Campbell era. it’s even worse now in the Buttman era — absolutely, positively, it is the almighty Buck that wins out over everything. Greedy Buttman is no friend of the Caps either. I wonder how much ($2 billion?) the expansion Seattle franchise will fork over to Buttman to try and buy a Stanley Cup at the expense of all the other franchises. For Vegas it was a bargain at $500 million, and they darned-near pulled it off
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I would like to know if anyone thinks a penalty should be given to someone who hits a goalie in the face area. One should be able to aim at the net not just shoot blindly. JMO