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Wild Card Race 2020


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1 minute ago, Floyd said:

Man, the Jets are out of the playoffs by one game or even one tie...  NHL will just resume with the start of the playoffs - no way they play the rest of the season out

No, because it would hurt profits and pay cheques. They'll play the games to make their money. 

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1 hour ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

Well all teams have played 68 games so they could base it on that. Or they all play 72.

the only fair way to do this is via winnipeg % as others have mentioned.  So the Jets are likely screwed.   Although the NHL did ask for building availability thru to July.   So maybe they'll just delay everything.

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Big debate in my pool about this.  I assume the NHL intends to play all the games.  If they're dark for two weeks, they likely get all the games in, maybe a condensed schedule.  But the NBA is going dark for 30 days.  If this goes on much beyond that, the NHL will have to give up those games or change the playoff format to shorter (they might have to anyway).  

Playing into July is one thing (two teams for the final).  But if you have numerous teams pushing August, I dont see it.  PA wont want to do it either.      Players cant miss their vacations.

I figured worse case scenario (aside from cancelling the season) would be go with records as of final day and pro-rate, but its a good point that they could just play everyone up to 72 (or 75 even) or go backwards and take standings at 68.  Or, do a play-in round with teams around the wild card.  They could also condense the first round to Best of Five but teams want that playoff money.

They said players will get paid, so team owners will want to play those games.  I wonder if there is insurance to reimburse teams or if the NHL will try to mitigate losses.  Salary cap might change next year...escrow to go way up.

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19 hours ago, Floyd said:

24 team playoff race seems really cool actually... like better than what we currently use

My favorite modified playoff scenario of the proposals that are out there is that this year the regular season is done right now, and all 31 teams make the playoffs. Teams 18-31 (the bottom 14) have a one game play-in at the home rink of the higher seeded team. 31 vs 18, 30 vs 19, etc. Teams 1-17 get a bye for this round.

The winners of those single games then play teams seeded 9th through 15th (7 series in total), with the 9th vs the lowest remaining seed, 10th vs 2nd lowest remaining, and so on. Also, the 16th seed vs 17th seed. All of those series are best-of-3, higher seed gets the extra home game. Teams 1-8 get a bye through this round as well.

Next round is seeds 1 through 8 playing off against the winners of those best-of-3, again with the highest vs lowest seed. This time it is a best-of-5.

From there onward, best-of-7 series with the highest vs lowest seeds until the Stanley Cup is awarded. Overall an extra round of playoffs but the total maximum number of games for any one team only goes from 28 to 30.

Given that right now only Detroit has been mathematically eliminated, it seems the fairest way not to arbitrarily eliminate teams that are still in the running and counted on a late push to make the playoffs (Jets are a prime example, sitting in the #1 wild card spot in the actual standings but based on percentage points are in fact .001 out of a playoff spot behind Calgary, who are #3 in the Pacific but would slide to the #2 wild card based on percentages).

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