Playoff Change: Should the NHL follow MLB

Playoff sports provides the best reality show you can tune in to. The tension that one play, one pitch, one shot can be the difference between your team advancing to the next round, winning a championship, or starting another offseason with hard questions and no parade to call off work to go see. To that end in 2011 Major League Baseball and Commissioner Bud Selig decided that what baseball needed to keep more fan bases interested late into the season would be a second wild card team. With the introduction of this additional playoff spot in both the American and National Leagues, baseball would now have a play-in game (yes, NCAA, that’s what it is) to determine which of the two wild card teams would move on to play the highest seeded team in their respective league. One game, winner take all, with a buildup that would include the possibility of more teams playing meaningful games later in the season. If that happens, stadiums stay fuller deeper into the season and television ratings will increase as fans hang on every pitch and swing to see their favorite teams’ fate determined.

So how does that sound, hockey? What if the NHL had one game where the bottom two teams that ‘qualified’ for postseason play square off against each other to determine who gets to play the top seed in the conference? At first thought, who wouldn’t appreciate sudden death playoff hockey? Essentially you get a Game 7 right at the start of the playoffs. Kind of like “Thunderdome” – two teams enter, one team leaves. It would most certainly be a sold out game producing more arena and ticket revenues, and the TV ratings would likely be a nice bump over what the league experiences during the regular season.

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Now queue the hockey purists, those that think any change to the structure of the game is sacrilegious. You’re having a hard enough time getting agreement on goaltending equipment, the size of the net, or that infernal Martin Brodeur-inspired trapezoid. To think that the Board of Governors would actually consider, let alone approve, a modification to the playoff format seems farfetched at best and at worse clinically insane.

To put it another way: when baseball added the two extra teams to account for the play-in game, this brought the total number of playoff teams in MLB to ten, which is 33.3% of the league. By contrast if the NHL were to adopt a similar model and increase the number of teams making the playoffs to nine per conference, a whopping 60% would qualify every season. As the model stands now, over half of teams qualify for the playoffs (53.3%). The competitive aspect of professional sports has to take a hit when your league is basically telling you that we are going to treat our professionals like a recreational soccer team for toddlers where everyone gets a trophy.

As much as the league and professional sports in general are looking for new ways to generate revenue, adding an additional game isn’t the answer for the NHL. Teams are already playing so many regular season games that by adding another playoff game you are cheapening the value of your own postseason. Why would you be concerned about putting forth maximum effort and risk in a regular season when you know on opening day you have a 60% chance of making the playoffs? You wouldn’t. Teams and players rest once spots are clinched so health is preserved with the thought of playing meaningful games deep into June. Rather than expand the playoffs, the league should consider shortening the regular season by ten games. Particularly if the rumored four team expansion by 2017 takes hold. There will be more travel strain placed on the players and an unintended consequence will be a sloppier product which you are trying to sell to fans in arenas and on television. And the league isn’t exactly playing from a position of strength on a TV contract.

The product on the ice needs to translate on television to the casual fan. While components of that include increased scoring, consistency in officiating and proper marketing, you just can’t continue to beat the horse and expect it to run. Adding playoff games sounds great in theory. Playoff hockey is among the greatest spectacles in all of sports, but not if the players are so mentally and physically drained they can’t perform to the level of their immense talents. The physical demands on players in hockey are different than those in baseball, and we should ensure for the good of the game and its growth that we protect its greatest asset: our players. And adding games is directly in counter to that, even playoff games.

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