How I would change the NHL schedule
This is how I would tweak the NHL schedule
Sometimes you Tweet something and think, “hey, I should expand on that.”
And more often than not, you get lazy, and forget to ever do that expansion.
That was my thinking this morning when still seeing some twitter reactions to this Tweet.
So, let’s expand.
As the Tweet says, we build an 82-game schedule that gets every team into every building, and then effectively has a recalibration moment after 62 games.
For the first 3/4ths of the season, each team plays every other team home-and-away to create that 62-game sample size. This gets every team into every building and all with the exact same opponents, so in theory everyone has the exact same strength of schedule.
At this point we split the league into two. As one Tweeter point out it works better with a 21/11 split than a 22/10 split, so kudos to them and we’ll go with that.
The top 21 teams play each other once, with the top-16 reaching the NHL playoffs in a 1 through 16 re-seeded format. (Standings continue on from the 62 game mark, we don’t want to devalue what a team has done for 3/4ths of the season). This gets 20 games of playoff-level opponents for 21 markets, which is great to sell if you are an owner or team executive.
The schedule remains balanced, everyone is still playing the same opponents, we have a true even strength of schedule across the league.
The bottom 11 teams play each other twice, home and away, for 20 games, and they enter that mini-20 game season with the points effectively re-set to zero. The team with the top record of the bottom-11 league (we can sponsor it, drive revenue!) gets the No. 1 pick in the draft. The team with the second-best record gets the No. 2 pick, so on, and so forth.
By my logic, which I admit can be faulty, this eliminates true tanking by owners and GMs. While a bad team may want to be in the bad zone, they can’t truly tank because they have to win games against their peers over the final 20 games.
For an example of this, in theory it could have looked a little bit like this last season.
It wasn’t a clean break, but was the rough NHL standings after 62 games last season. These would have been your bottom-11 teams.
Now imagine those fan bases having an opportunity to re-set and root for wins, not losses over the final 20 games.
Each game would matter and as a business owner, you can sell that as a storyline to keep people’s interest.
Someone pointed out to me on Twitter that players don’t care about draft picks. Which is true, which is why a true single-elimination tournament for the No. 1 pick would never work, but a re-defining of 1/4th of regular season, in my mind would.
Players and coaches don’t tank, they try to win on a nightly basis even when their owner or GM is pulling the plug on things. This system is based on forcing the GMs and owners to not pull the plug, give us meaningful games across the board, and potentially avoid true tanking.
There are flaws with this plan, I get that. In fact, I’m willing to discuss the flaws in the comments below. But figured we could have some fun with this.
I like the idea, but it does seem to kill the excitement for a playoff spot. I guess you just shift that to the midpoint in the season? Scheduling would be difficult but doable. Your biggest hurdle would just be that people hate change.
As a hockey concept I love it, but the biggest issue I see is building schedule, particularly in arenas that are shared with NBA teams. Scheduling concerts and other events becomes nearly impossible for that final 20 game stretch.