The NHL should follow the NBA’s lead and institute a play-in round but in the NHL’s cap world, the difference between the best and the next few best has shrunk, according to Patrick Johnston of the Vancouver PROVINCE. When you are starting the playoffs just a couple days after the end of the regular season like the NHL are this year, that is “barely an advantage.” Johnston added you need to find a “different way to reward the better team.” And having the lower seed fight their way into the first round is a “great way to do this.” He noted having your qualifier “play one or two more games in a two or three day span,” before a day or two off before the first round is “reasonable.” And if you are following the NBA’s play-in format, “that’s what you’d end up with.” Johnston: “It’s an incentive to finish in the top six teams in the conference.” The other benefit to all this is “focus attention on two games filled with drama.” Johnston wrote just “look at the quality of teams that would be in this mini-tournament: in the east, Tampa, Pittsburgh, Washington, Detroit and in the west, Nashville, Vegas, St. Louis and Minnesota.” Johnston: “Those are all strong hockey markets where the buzz would be palpable on both a local and national scale” (Vancouver PROVINCE, 4/13).
ADAPT TO THE TIMES: In Denver, Corey Masisak wrote this “isn’t about which teams or how many deserve to make the playoffs.” This is about “taking the best playoff format in North American pro sports and making it a little better, just like the NBA did.” The drama those games have provided in the NBA “has been excellent.” Masisak: “Why should the NHL do this? It’s one of the rare adjustments a pro sports league has made in recent history that was both a benefit to its fans and the league’s collective bottom line. Most things like this these days are solely about the latter. … and some added intrigue throughout the regular season.” Maybe the NHL “doesn’t want to just copy the NBA’s idea.” But if that is the case, “it’s too bad because it was a good idea that has become a great one after being implemented” (DENVER POST, 4/13).
CHANGE IS GOOD: In Pittsburgh, Paul Zeise wrote the NHL “needs to adopt” the play-in tournament format and do it now because it would be “spectacular” but the “hockey traditionalists and self-appointed guardians of the game would shriek about it because they hate anything that might change or modernize the NHL.” They also would “absolutely hate the fact that it would be perceived they were copying the NBA.” Zeise wrote the Stanley Cup playoffs are the “most exciting postseason” in all of the major professional sports and are great just how they are. But a play-in tournament “would only enhance them, make them more exciting at the start and wouldn’t do a thing to change the actual tournament as it is” (PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE, 4/15).
