harmfuljays wrote:
I'd really like to see a tournament here if they come back in August. At this point its kind of lost...there hasn't been a game for almost a month. Players and teams would take 2-3 weeks to ramp back up. In the interest of including everyone...I think its a league wide tourney based on Conference standings.....unfortunately the league isn't balanced correctly so you can't do that. So 1-12.....best of 5 until the conference finals or SCF which is best of 7.
That gives us some really good matchups to start with....Boston/Montreal anyone?
or you go back to the Division and take the top 6 in each and do it that way. That does leave certain teams like the Rangers and Chicago out in the cold though so probably not ideal considering you'd be adding in Anaheim and Buffalo at their expense.
Anyway...if they don't can it I think a tournament is the only way to do this.
Part of the trouble is the uneven number of games played leading to falsely inflated standings. Guess they could use points/game at the stopping point and choose the top 6. Or something like give the top 3 from each division a bye for a week or so, during which time the remaining teams have a wild card play in tournament, so to speak. Like the teams in WC1 & WC2 get a bye, while the remaining teams (non-playoff normally) have single game knockout matchups. So matchups would go: 9 vs 16, 10 vs 15, 11 vs 14, 12 vs 13. Losers go home. Then there's a day off. Then the winners play each other for the right to play either WC1 or WC2 the following night, which gives an advantage to the current WC teams. Then after the WC teams play, playoffs go on as normal. Maybe reduce to 5 game series to save at least a week overall on playoffs.
Just thought it up now. Maybe didn't explain well, but it's not really my job, is it?
So for the east, Boston, Tampa, Toronto, Caps, Philly and Pens are automatically in.