Quote:
Originally Posted by AndrewG
I know the NHL is trying to grow rivalries in that area in particular where the overall hockey markets of the combined are the weakest of all divisions. (not insulting all those teams, just stating a fact as far as attendance and the fact theres no teams that have been around a while.) The old playoff sysytem would work well for this.
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It's a little hard to take the top four teams from each division when there are three divisions in each conference. That's twelve qualifiers, and with after the first two rounds of intradivision play, you're left with three teams. How is that going to work?
You could take the top two in each division plus two wild cards for a total of 8 qualifiers in each conference, but now you've got wild cards. How do they fit into a divisionally-based playoff?
The only option would be to realign the league back into two divisions per conference. But that would mean large divsions (seven and eight teams).
Another item to note is the schedule. Divisional games have been reduced in recent years in order to boost interconference games (and even at their highest divisional games still accounted for a small proportion of the games played).