Stanley Cup Playoffs Expansion Would Be Terrible

The Stanley Cup Playoffs are headed for expansion if you believe one rumor.

The Stanley Cup Playoffs are the most exciting post season in all of North American sports.  A race to sixteen wins filled with suspense, drama and often multiple overtime games that can end on the flick of the wrist.  One suggestion would expand the qualifying field and I don’t think I could despise that idea more.

TSN’s Gord Miller is quoted in this SI.com piece by Allan Muir that real dialogue is taking place at the NHL level about Stanley Cup playoffs expansion.  Take a look at Miller’s quote here:

"“Heard an interesting idea from an NHL executive about expanding the playoff format to 20 teams, with [four] wild card teams per conference,” TSN’s Gord Miller tweeted over the weekend. “The wild card teams would play in four single-elimination ‘play-in’ games, two in each conference, on the [Monday] and [Tuesday] after the regular season [ends].”"

I suppose I understand with expansion looming this being on the table.  Well get it off!  If the NHL has half of their teams qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs post-expansion (16 of a likely 32), that’s plenty.  Right now you have drama and intensity around qualifying for the two wild-card positions with teams that you can argue still deserve to be in the playoffs.  As Muir points out, extending to the 9th and 10th teams and having four ‘play-in’ games in their own little tournament would bring the Florida Panthers and Philadelphia Flyers into the Eastern Conference tournament.  The Western Conference would add the Calgary Flames and San Jose Sharks.

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First, thank you NCAA for the nauseating term ‘play-in game’.  If you are playing a game when the post season starts, it’s a playoff game.  Stop trying to be cute for marketing purposes.  Secondly, after an 82-game regular season is the NHL going to seriously consider adding any more games?  The Stanley Cup Playoffs already end in June.  You’re shaving days from the offseason and increasing injury risk to the players, albeit for compensation.  That will be a great conversation to collectively bargain with Donald Fehr, the human lockout machine.

The biggest reason I hate this idea is because of how it cheapens the regular season.  Writers and other media figures have discussed the Stanley Cup playoffs for weeks now.  Who is getting in?  Are the Los Angeles Kings going to make it?  Look at all the activity around the trade deadline, which Muir points out would erode and he’s correct.  This is excitement!  And now you are going to let more teams in because you can make a few million dollars at the gate?

If the NHL wants to make more money with its product, give fans a better product.  Find a way to remove the trap.  Work with the competition committee and discuss the balance between going back to wooden sticks and reducing equipment.  It certainly didn’t hurt scoring in the 1980’s, did it?  Go to the Olympic ice surface and give the greatest and most creative players in the game more room to work.

But for the love of Bobby Orr don’t adopt the “everybody gets a trophy” mentality and let more teams in.  While the NHL does produce a fair share of lower seeds being successful (Los Angeles Kings recently) do you really want to argue the San Jose Sharks or Philadelphia Flyers deserve to go to the Stanley Cup playoffs?  Heck, the Dallas Stars and Colorado Avalanche are only five points behind the Sharks.  Let them in and play.  Or let everyone in the Stanley Cup playoffs and get that compelling opening Western Conference classic  between the Arizona Coyotes and Edmonton Oilers!

Some teams will qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs and some won’t.  That’s just the way it is.  The real problem is the illusion based on the standings there are more competitive teams than actually exist.  The NHL is rewarding losses in overtime and in shootouts and that needs to stop now.  Adjust the point system to be two points for a win in regulation or overtime and one points for a win in the shootout, if you keep it.  Lose in any fashion, and you get ZERO points.  By doing this the NHL could make its regular season mean more and more clearly separate the deserving playoff teams from the pack.

But the answer to let more teams into the Stanley Cup playoffs is the easy answer so that’s what will likely happen.  It’s the wrong answer.  It doesn’t make the game better or stronger.  It cheapens the product.  Casual fans will tune out of the regular season because the odds are their favorite team will qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs and that doesn’t grow interest in the game, gate revenues or television ratings.  You can’t grow your game by making the bulk of your product matter less.

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