Your Hero Opportunity

Most of the time, it's hard to know the real value of what you do. For most of us, we know that whatever we did today was good enough or at least not bad enough that we kept our jobs for another day, that our marriages stayed together another day, that we got the kids back and forth to school, and as important is it is to do all of those things, it's hard to know exactly whether what we said was good or just good enough, whether what we did was right or just not so wrong someone would say something about it. With the exception of professions like nurses, doctors, EMTs, soldiers, fire fighters, pilots, and a few others and very rare cases like car accidents and natural disasters, we can only guess at whether or not what we did was the best thing we could have done.

And, that's fine. For me, one of the primary skills we need to develop to live fulfilling lives is a base level of comfort with ambiguity. Honestly, I'd go even further and say some of the most destructive forces in human society, fascism, racism, theocracy, are based in creating a false sense of certainty. They are supported by and destructive because they create these certainties upon which people then live their lives, regardless of the consequences or impacts their actions may have on others.

Which is a long way to say that ambiguity is not a problem and not something I routinely try to remove from my life and my writing.

There is no ambiguity here. There is no doubt. Even in this postmodern, post-structuralist, deconstructed world, there is a right thing to do.

We've all wondered, in various lexicons and with various fantastic or realistic scaffolding, what we would do if we were put in a life and death situation, if we were given a dramatic choice, if we were called on to be a hero.

There may not be an actual ticking time bomb, their may not be flames or car chases or dearly beloveds dangling from cliffs, but this is your life or death moment, this is your hero opportunity and what you must do is clear.

You must vote Democrat in every race this election. If you always vote Democrat, if you always vote Republican, if you mix it up, if you vote third party, if you don't vote, if you've never voted before, the right thing for you to do, the heroic thing for you to do is vote for every Democrat on your ballot.

If you're reading this, odds are you already planning on doing that. I don't know if I have the eloquence and insight to breakthrough to those of you who are not already planning to vote Democrat this fall, but you can't succeed if you don't try. That said, I know there are some of you who will never vote Democrat, who will always vote Republican, and this is the part where I'm supposed to say that I respect you and that we're supposed to find common ground, but I don't, there is no meaningful common ground, and though I will applaud those of you who undertake the long and difficult personal journey away from this current incarnation of Republicanism, right now your votes are literally tearing families apart, literally destroying our system of government, literally traumatizing millions of your friends, neighbors, and family members, and literally killing people and if Fox News is protecting you from that truth my little blog post isn't going to bust in.

So I'm going to focus on three types of people who might not vote for Democrats in November.

I Oppose the Two-Party System

How much has voting third-party or abstaining from elections done to diminish the power of the two-party system over the last twenty years or so? How many Green Party members are there in Congress? Governors? State legislatures?

Listen the two-party system is undemocratic, has pushed American policy far to the right of the American public actually believes, and fundamentally stifles the conversation around policy and legislation, but how does helping Republicans maintain power, despite the fact that most Americans do not support the Republican agenda, push us towards a multi-party system? In fact, because Republicans are actually disenfranchising voters, specifically progressive voters, on top of everything else, empowering Republicans by voting third-party or abstaining from voting actually hinders our ability to transition to a multi-party system.

If you really want to begin diminishing the power of the two-party system, vote for very Democrat on your ballot and then do whatever you can in your state to reform your elections to include ranked choice voting or instant run-off elections. It is a popular idea, it won on the ballot in Maine, and it is the first step in breaking through the two-party system.

The Democrats Are Whores to [Insert Special Interest Here]

With the exception of radical conspiracy theorists, you're also probably right. Contemporary politics is a money game and in contemporary American capitalism very few good people have the kind of money it takes to influence politics. Look behind your favorite Democrat politician and there's probably at least one really bad corporation or industry (probably pharma) donating to them.

But does that put them on par with what Republicans do? Really? Does the fact that many (but not all!) Democrats take money from problematic corporations really mean that the Trump administration is acceptable? Is your ideological purity worth all of this collateral damage?

Furthermore, as above, how does helping Republicans remain in power by voting third-party or abstaining from voting help get money out of politics? Do you see any Republicans at any level advocating for campaign finance reform? Cause I don't.

So, vote for every Democrat on your ballot this Fall and help get money out of politics by donating to politicians that reject corporate and PAC donations and pushing for campaign finance reform in your state.

I Don't Care

Someone you love does.

The most important voters in America are nonvoters, those who are eligible, but don't. There are lots of reasons for this, many of which come from structural impediments to voting (many of which are intentional) so I'm not really talking to those who are logistically prevented from voting (but let me break in here to say, do whatever you can. Lyft will take you to the polls, Get out the Vote organizations will get you there, coordinate with your boss, your coworkers whatever, because, honestly, you might not get another chance to vote.).

Whatever reason you have for not caring, whether it's that feel as though your vote doesn't matter, or that no politicians represent you specifically, or whatever is fine and I'm not going to try to argue against that idea. I don't know what matters to you so I have no idea how to make you care.

Someone you love cares. Someone you love was traumatized by what happened yesterday in the Kavanaugh hearing. Someone you love was traumatized when the Access Hollywood tape didn't end Trump's campaign. Someone you love is terrified because they emigrated here recently or are first generation or just happen to have a Hispanic sounding name and there is a real chance ICE could sweep them up. Someone you love is scared of the uptick in hate crimes, someone you love is scared of LGBT information being scrubbed from federal websites, someone you love is scared their asthma will become unmanageable if the air quality regulations are eliminated, someone you love is scared of dying from an illegal abortion. Someone you love has gained weight and lost sleep and felt a pit with sharp edges in their stomachs for what feels like forever and someone you love will never be the same again the way our grandparents who lived through the Great Depression would keep old junk in their basements because they could never quite shake the fear of bread lines.

Maybe politics doesn't actually affect you. Maybe you have good reasons to not care. Maybe those reasons are good enough for whatever logistical challenges you face to voting to count as a hassle.

Fine. Whatever.

But you are not the only person in your life. If you're not going to vote Democrat for yourself, vote Democrat for someone you love. And let's put a rational self-interest spin on this too. If Republicans hold on to the House and Senate, someone you love will look up from weeping and ask you if you voted yesterday and your relationship with them will never be the same if you say, “no.” Shit, vote Democrat for someone I love. I mean, if it really and truly doesn't matter to you, why not make my grandmother's day?

Your Opportunity

So this is your opportunity to be a hero. I won't say we're lucky to have this opportunity and I won't say we should be thankful our opportunity is so easy to capitalize on, but here it is. Our chance to do something great.

Will you be a hero?

Turinng the NHL Into a Two-Tier League

For fun, let's imagine restructuring the NHL into two-tiers, sort of like professional soccer leagues around the world. There would be a Premier League (or Prince of Wales division, see what I did there.) and a Second League (or Adams division). Reorganizing the league this way would greatly reduce the number of “meaningless games” during the regular season and reduce the value of “tanking,” while producing more potentially exciting games and more interesting interactions between the teams, and, give the league a structure for incorporating all the expansion they're desperate to do. You'll see how all of that could happen as I get in to the details.

First, some basics.

36 teams, 18 in the Prince of Wales Division and 18 in the Adams Division. Each division would be divided into an East and West conference of 9 teams each. (This will also work just fine with a 32 team league, though the playoff structure would have to be redone.) Only the teams in the Prince of Wales (or Adams, doesn't really matter to me what the premier division is called) will be eligible to compete for the Stanley Cup (more on the playoff structure soon). (Obviously, the Adams division will have it's own playoffs, again more on that later.) All the teams will play every other team in the league at least once, but no team will play any team in the other division more than twice. (With the extra game being for “natural rivalries” between teams in different divisions, say, going from this year, Calgary and Edmonton.) In theory, once this is in place, you could keep adding teams as much as you want. Just keep the PoW at 18 and stick as many expansion teams as you want the Adams division and adjust the playoff structure accordingly. In theory, you could even add another tier if you wanted to.

The draft lottery would work essentially the same as it does now, with the entire league drafting together, so the last place team in the Adams would have the best chance at the first pick. Trades could also happen between divisions (more on that later.) Every team makes the playoffs within its division with one exception (more on that later). There will be a system of relegation and promotion (more on that later). That's pretty much the basics.

Let's get into the weeds.

EXPANSION

Let's start hashing things out by getting the League up to 36 teams and dividing them into the two divisions. The league has 31 teams at the moment, so we'll need five more to get there. Here are the cities that I think should get teams: Seattle (since it seams like they're going to get one anyway), Quebec City and Hartford (since they already had teams), Hamilton (since there has been some momentum around a team in Hamilton for years now, but for some reason we care about what the Sabers think), and...

a team owned by the NHL located in some city that wins some crazy-ass year long competition. Does Montreal have room for a second team? (Maybe.) Does Boston? (No.) Could somewhere small, but with hockey history like Saskatoon (birth place of Gordie Howe) make a case? Is there another Las Vegas hiding somewhere? (Branson?) PEI? Madison? A team shared by the Dakotas? Lake Superior? New England? And if, after some reasonable amount of time (5 years, let's say), that city, can't support an NHL hockey team, well, they just hold the contest again. The operations of the team would be independent of the NHL, but the NHL could potentially use it as a kind of ambassador team. Moving it around North America (or beyond), and trying out new things (ticket packages, carbon neutral arenas, municipal stakes a la the Green Bay Packers). Maybe this makes it hard to keep top talent and compete, but, well somebody's got to be last and if somebody's got to be last it might as well be a team that is also doing interesting things for the game of hockey.

Once we have all the teams we'll need to divide them into the two divisions. So, the PoW division would be composed of the original 6, plus the next 12 teams with the highest total of regulation and overtime wins over the last, say, five seasons. Yes, this means that an undeserving team or two might get bumped for an original-6 team that's had a bad run of late, but I honestly can't imagine starting out with any number of original six teams without a shot at the Stanley Cup. If they play their way into regulation after the league has been reorganized, well, that's on them. (Every redemption story, starts with a fall.)

The long term wins total, as opposed to say, the end of season ranking, is a way to reward long term success and prevent a good franchise that just happens to be going through a rebuilding year or two from being relegated and a bad franchise that happens to get a few good bounces down the stretch from being promoted.

With the divisions and conferences set, the regular season plays as it does now, with the scheduling exception described above. Oh, and while I've got you: 3 points for a regulation win, 2 points for an overtime win, 1 point for an overtime loss, and...1.5 points for a shootout win.

PLAYOFFS

The first thing one might object to, to this current structure is there isn't really a playoff race. Every team will end up in some form of playoff, either for the Stanley Cup or whatever the Adams division trophy is called. (The Kenora Cup, perhaps.) The only thing the regular season will decide, in terms of the specific season, is the seeding going into the playoffs. But that seeding will be significant and whether a franchise is safely in the PoW or in jeopardy of being relegated will be determined by their seeding. Let's see how that works.

First of all, the top seeds in the Adams East & West conferences will play the 9^th seeds in the PoW East & West conferences in a one game playoff. We could have both games played on the same day, maybe a Sunday, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. This essentially creates a hockey holiday, in which pretty much all hockey fans are watching both games and both games are absolutely vital for both teams. Think of how much money the bars in Canada would make on this day. Think of the parties. Think of how much fun that would be, to be with a group of neutrals and just pick a team to root for. Think of the parties the winning teams' fans throw. Think of the parties the losing teams' fans throw! The NHL could even throw a whole bunch of weird and awkward ceremonies all over the place and it would still be about as much fun as you can possibly have as a hockey fan.

The winners of these one-game playoffs, face the 8^th seeds in the PoW East and West conferences in a best of five series. The winner of that series enters the official Stanley Cup Playoffs as the 8^th seed. Depending on the situation, what happens in those playoff games and in that series, could have huge implications for the teams involved, but I'll get into the more when I get to relegation and promotion. And then it's a regular 8 team playoff. 1 plays 8, 2 plays 7 and so forth.

I want to point out one other benefit to this playoff structure: ta da! We have created a bye-week at the end of the season for seeds 1-7. One of the things no one really acknowledges about the Stanley Cup Playoffs is that, often, it's the good team that happens to be healthiest that wins. A bye-week doesn't solve all of the health problems that can impact the results of the playoffs but it mitigates them, at least a little bit. Every 1-7 team will have a week to give their legs a chance to rest, to recover from small injuries, to get their goalies off their feet a little bit. And since there will be hockey going on during that time, it's not like it would be dead time for the league or the fans.

And how about the difference between the 7^th seed and the 8^th seed? Significant games indeed.

Most of the new significance, though, will come from the relegation and promotion system, so let's do that now.

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RELEGATION AND PROMOTION

First of all, the Stanley cup winner is protected from relegation for two years. (Success should be rewarded.) Conference champs will be protected for one year. (So, you know, they can finally all touch the conference trophies.)

If an Adams Division team wins its way into the Stanley playoffs, it is promoted to PoW and the 9^th seed of the PoW is relegated to the Adams. Now the difference between the 8^th and 9^th seed in the PoW conferences is massive. Furthermore, in the Adams division, the difference between 1 & 2 is huge, as 2 doesn't even get a shot at promotion. But wait, there's more.

As above, the Stanley Cup winner is protected from relegation for two years. So they are not eligible for relegation, even if they end up 9^th in their conference, and even if they lose that one game playoff. If that happens, the 8^th seed is made eligible for relegation. If they lose that subsequent playoff series, they are relegated instead. So, if a Stanley Cup winner struggles at the beginning of the season, the significance between 7 & 8 is huge (on top of the significance of the by-week), as the 8^th seed could become eligible for relegation. But, also from above, it is possible for a PoW conference to have two teams protected from relegation in the same season; the Stanley Cup champ from two seasons ago, and the conference champion from the preceding season.

What happens if they're both terrible? And the 1 seed from the Adams beats them both. We can't have that team play the 7^th place team to settle the relegation issue, as that would wreck the playoff structure. So in that (most likely) rare case, if the Adams team wins more total playoff games than the 7^th seed PoW team, they are promoted and the 7^th PoW team is relegated. This means, that not only is difference between 6 & 7 significant, but, we could find ourselves with two playoff series where 4-1 is significantly different from 4-0. We could also see (again highly unlikely) a conference final in which the winner is protected from relegation for one year and goes on to the Stanley Cup finals and the loser is relegated.

So, now, through this system two-tiered system, there is a huge difference between the 9th and 8th place teams in the PoW, as moving up to 8th most of the time protects you from being relegated, and there is a huge difference between 8th and 7th because the 7th place team dodges that extra playoff series and is even more likely to be safe from relegation than the 8th seed, and, in rare years when two protected teams are bad, the difference between 7th and 6th is now everything.

In the Adams division, teams that would normally be churning through their season without a shot at either the playoffs or the top draft choice, will have something to play for as the difference between 2^nd and 1^st will also be huge. The 2^nd place team, settles for playing for the Kenora Cup (look it up!) and the first place team gets a shot at promotion.

The primary goal of this reorganization of the NHL is the create more meaningful games over the course of the season and the playoffs, and so we could see a last week of the season or even last day of the season, in which massive rewards are played for, and playoff wins that are significant even in playoff series losses. Sure, there might still be some tanking, but that would only be at the bottom of the Adams division. And you know what, that's fine. They're the bottom of the Adams division.

As you can see, promotion is actually pretty difficult to achieve. You could have a team do well for several seasons, and just choke in the one-game playoff. Likewise, you could have a team hanging out in 9^th place for awhile, getting saved from relegation over and over again by 8^th place teams. Or who knows what else could happen? So, I'm also totally on board with the idea of a semi-regular reassessment of the tiers, maybe every five or six years, in which some quorum of significant members of the league (owners, managers, coaches, players, scouts, journalists, etc.) get together and, through some formalized and transparent process, consider promoting and relegating teams outside of this structure.

TRADES AND THE SALARY CAP

For the most part, trades and the salary cap would work in the exact same way they do now. (However that is.) There would be trade deadlines and trades could happen across divisions. Free agency would work the same way, though, of course, Adams division teams would have a tougher time signing top name players, but, for the most part, things would look the same. But I would introduce one wrinkle, specifically around “rental” players.

A “rental” period would be open sometime after the formal trade deadline, but, only trades between the divisions would be allowed. This would give PoW teams a chance to stock up for the playoffs AND give good players stuck on Adams division teams an extra chance to end up in the playoffs. But let's add another wrinkle. PoW would be able to include “cash considerations” in their trade, however, that cash paid to the Adams division team would count against their cap for the year. (Who knows, maybe that's how it works already. I certainly don't understand all the cap rules and well, I'm not going to look it up.) But it will be different for the Adams team.

The Adams team would tag that as cap-free salary and as long as they apply it to players salaries it is excluded from cap considerations until it is “spent.” Here's how that would work. Say a PoW team sends a prospect and $10 million in cash to an Adams team. The Adams team could then use that money to bump up the salary of a youngish top-pair defenseman approaching the end of his contract by $5 million a year for two years. Or if they think they can play themselves into promotion with one big free agent signing, they can pay someone an extra $10 million the next year without any cap consequences. You could actually see a smart GM in the Adams division, draft well for a couple of years, make a couple of “rental” trades every year for a few years and end up with enough cap free salary to build a promotion team in one off-season. The important thing about this, is it provides a way for Adams divisions teams to compensate for the natural disadvantage they have in signing free agents.

It should also be noted, “rental” players wouldn't just be for teams looking to stock up for a serious Cup run. It could also be for teams trying to jump up to 8, 7, or 6. More teams would have motivations to make some kind of play near the end of the season to protect their place in the PoW and so more of these deals would happen, redistributing a fair amount of wealth downward.

Furthermore, the fact that inter-division trading exists and that there will be some incentive for Adams division teams to trade their players in rental deals, means that Adams division players, along with playing for the success of their teams, will also, essentially, always be trying out for the PoW division. Even if your particular team doesn't have the combined talent to do anything more than languish in the bottom of the division, you don't have to. You can play your way into the PoW division and perhaps right on to a Stanley Cup contender.

ADAMS DIVISION PLAYOFFS

The Adams division will also have a playoffs, which, I think, will be great for everyone. More hockey, with more significance. Maybe there's a fan base somewhere that just needs to see playoff hockey to get excited. Maybe there's a player who will thrive in that environment but never gets the chance because he's on a shitty team. The NHL is good at trophies, so why not have another. (The Kenora Cup. I made up this whole thing, so I can name the trophy.)

The Kenora Cup playoff structure will be the inverse of the Stanley Cup playoff. If the number one seed in the division plays its way into the Stanley Cup playoffs (one-game playoff, plus best of five series) it has essentially moved out of the Adams division, meaning that its conference will now have eight teams in it and a good old fashioned 8-team playoff will start. If the number one seed does not advance into the Stanley Cup playoffs, the 8^th and 9^th seeds in the conference will play a best of five series to become the 8^th seed and then we'll be back to the regular 8 team playoff structure.

CONCLUSION OF SORTS

And there you have it. More significant games. More playoff hockey. More story lines. New rivalries. More fan bases will have the opportunity to celebrate a kind of success. Better teams will play each other more often. More games with playoff implications would happen. There'd probably be more trades at the deadline. And the league can keep adding teams as long as they want without potentially compromising any of that. And we get a hockey holiday. It may be an impossible dream, but it's a good dream.

Also, 3 points for a regulation win, 2 points for an overtime win, 1 point for an overtime loss, 1.5 points for a shootout win. Think about it.