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.
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 9th
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 8th 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 8th 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 7th seed and the 8th
seed? Significant games indeed.
Most of the new
significance, though, will come from the relegation and promotion
system, so let's do that now.
.
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 9th seed of the PoW is relegated to the Adams. Now
the difference between the 8th and 9th 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 9th
in their conference, and even if they lose that one game playoff. If
that happens, the 8th 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 8th
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 7th 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 7th seed PoW team, they are
promoted and the 7th 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.
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 2nd
and 1st will also be huge. The 2nd 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 9th
place for awhile, getting saved from relegation over and over again
by 8th 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 8th and 9th
seeds in the conference will play a best of five series to become the
8th 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.
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