Does anyone else dislike the multiple division setups of pro sports?
I've been trying to follow the Red Wing's quest to make the playoffs. The NHL has this dopey (IMO) division arrangement of Atlantic and Metropolitan, etc. Who makes the playoffs? The top three in each (of how many?) division and then the (how many?) wildcards? And how do you check the standings when you get up in the morning to figure this out?
Why not just have two conferences, somewhat geographically arranged, and put the top 8 teams in the playoffs? How hard would that be?
MLB is much the same, with the NFL and NBA not far behind.
Hey, at least they moved the Red Wings to the Eastern Conference. Used to suck having to watch an early playoff game in San Jose with a 10:30 ET start time.
Ironic given that since the move to the East the Wings have barely played any playoff games. I remember when they talked about the advantages in the playoffs, and how the move will revitalize the Wings/Leafs rivalry etc. all of which turned out to be basically a moot point given the Wings were just fading into irrelevance.
I think the NHL realignment in 2013 was a total dud to be honest. The Wings have been an anonymous also-ran in the East and there's ironically now a sense that there's more of a history between the Wings and various Western teams than any of the Eastern teams. Probably because the Wings were basically constantly in the playoffs fighting those Western teams off for decades while there's nothing memorable about the Wings' time in the East.
Also, the divisions are too big and disjointed for people to really pay attention to them now. If you ask a 100 hockey fans to recite the divisions and all their teams from the top of their head, I bet 90+ wouldn't get them all.
Being a big Hawks fan, I wish the Red Wings didn't move over to the East. That was always a fun rivalry and it didn't matter what either teams record was. Each team ramped up their game when they played. Now they just play twice a year, and it is a pain to get tickets because of that reason.
Is it football season yet?
Go Blue!!!!
As a BEARS fan I am ready to see the current Lions move to the AFC.
I think you're vastly overstating the effect of moving to the East. The Wings were destined for some bad years. The simple fact is that they are just not a very good hockey team and are missing LOTS of pieces still.
Nowhere did I say that the Wings are bad because they moved to the East. The realignment simply coincided with the decline of the team. It's just funny because the push by the Wings to go East was mostly based on complaints about travel affecting playoff series which - coincidentally or not - has happened to not be a factor at all in the decade plus since then.
And the simple reality is that even today the two teams most Wings fans view as rivals are two Western teams - Chicago and Colorado - while there's basically no real relationship with the Bruins or Habs i.e. so called division rivals and even the Leafs rivalry remains lukewarm at best. Turns out that playing Original Six teams with which you had a rivalry 50+ years earlier doesn't really matter if both teams suck or they're good and you suck.
While I will always hate the Avs, once that generation of players retired and moved on, it wasn’t quite the same.
there's ironically now a sense that there's more of a history between the Wings and various Western teams than any of the Eastern teams.
Not sure about others, but this was my feeling then. We were leaving the Western Conference, where we had a ton of history and rivalries, and moving to the East where we had none. The travel thing strikes me as kind of a weak excuse anyway, since there are at best only a couple Eastern teams within driving distance. It's not like the Wings are on the East Coast...
Helluva lot closer than the west coast teams, and you’re losing dozens of games starting at 10/1030 Michigan time, which was never fun.
Unpopular opinion alert: I preferred the western conference. It had the best rivalries: Chicago, Colorado, St Louis, Dallas, Nashville.
The Eastern conference teams are boring.
Not a hockey fan, but it turns out the internet exists. Not really all that complicated.
Your link makes my point!
If you can't understand a playoff system that requires two simple bullet points, you're telling on yourself
- The top-3 teams from every division make the playoffs
- The two remaining teams with the highest point totals in each conference are the wildcards.
ESPN app literally two clicks and you have an answer
^^^^^
This exactly. Standings.....wild card.
I just don't know about the internet thing.
Are you sure about that?
I don't mind the overall division structure in the NHL but I'm a little skeptical of the 'top 3 in' format - sort of easy to picture given scenarios where a division third place team gets in over a better 5th place team from the other division.
That’s where the wild cards come in to play. If 3rd is division A is worse than 5th in division B, 4 and 5 in Division B would be the wild cards. That way, nobody gets screwed.
So hypothetically the Islanders finish third in their division and the Red Wings finish 5th in their division and the Red Wings have more points, the Red Wings will get in?
If I understand it correctly, in that scenario the Red Wings are in because both wild cards would be coming from their division, but if a team was sixth in their division and ahead of the third place team in the other division they would not make it.
It's pretty simple: the top three teams from each division are in. After that, they take the top two of the remaining teams regardless of division.
That was what I thought as well.
So hypothetically the Red Wings could finish with more points than say, the 3rd place Islanders and miss the playoffs if they finished 6th in their division.
One division would have to be horrendous and the other amazing. That said, intra division play would likely prevent that scenario. (e.g. SEC is so good that it hurts their chances of getting multiple teams in the playoff)
Happy Monday to you too!
Not an expert on hockey, but whenever something doesn’t make a ton of sense, the reason is usually “history”. It shouldn’t be a surprise that massive organizations are usually just a pile of bandaids behind the scenes.
Whenever an organization expands or acquires a new entity, the top priority is almost always “hold the existing business harmless”; expansion teams get worse deals, or new conferences, or there are grandfathering rules applied. These things are usually meant to be temporary, but there’s no money in backend streamlining like there is in expansion/acquisition/re-negotiation, so the “hold existing business harmless” rules just keep stacking up.
Sorry, I’m feeling a little frustrated with my own company this morning.
The division format helps to cut down on travel. If Detroit is traveling to Oakland as often as they go to Cleveland, that's more of a strain on people and finances.
I actually liked the old format they got rid of in the 90s, where the top four teams in your division made the playoffs. Really set up for some intense division rivalries.
I agree that the NHL division setup is unnecessarily convoluted, and made worse by the Atlantic and Metropolitan names. I think they could probably follow your suggestion of making a balanced schedule and seeding 1-8 in conference, and do away with divisions, and it would make the league better. Though the NHL always has bigger fish to fry.
Divisions make sense to (A) limit travel by scheduling more games with nearby teams and (B) build and market rivalries. The NHL wants the Alberta teams, Toronto/Montreal, etc. to play each other as often as possible (and in the playoffs as well) and I think the current alignment tries to accomplish that. It makes some sense.
Travel is less of an issue now than it was in the days when teams took trains across the country to play. Starting last year, MLB reduced the number of divisonal games (from 6 series/19 games to 4/13) in order to balance the schedule, so now each team plays every other team in baseball. It took 20+ years of interleague play and 50+ years for the NL to adopt the DH before the change. Is it better for the league if the Yankees and Red Sox have games against the Rockies and Marlins instead of each other? Debatable, but for the league overall, it's probably better for the brand for each team to play in every other city.
It's kind of insane to me that the Dodgers never played a regular season game in old Yankee Stadium. Plenty of World Series, of course, going back to the Brooklyn days, but the first time the interleague rotation had LAD playing in the Bronx was the new stadium in 2010.
I would welcome a return of the Patrick, Adams, Norris and Smythe monikers but I have no problem with divisions per se. In fact, I want more hot division action. As an Isles fan, I'm looking for Rags and Pens games on the schedule (unless I'm thinking about my wallet).
It'll always be the Campbell and Wales to me!
There are two divisions in each conference, somewhat geographically aligned. There are two conferences.
The top 3 teams in each division + next two best teams make the playoffs, resulting in 8 teams from each conference.
To check standings, I go to nhl.com then click “standings” in the top right. Then click “wild card” and it shows the current playoff standings (LINK).
As to your last question, they do have 2 conferences. I prefer the NHL method. It takes the three best teams in each division and guarantees them a playoff spot regardless of record. That ensures at least 3 teams from each division are in the playoffs and not having something stupid where most of an entire division is left out, which would happen if they just picked the best 8 teams.
You are the ChatGPT of this thread
lmao not sure if that’s a compliment but I’m taking it as one
It means you're really smart, about a lot of things.
My wife has a shirt that says “I don’t need Google, I have my husband.”
she says it’s not a joke and means it but idk
That ensures at least 3 teams from each division are in the playoffs and not having something stupid where most of an entire division is left out, which would happen if they just picked the best 8 teams
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Having the 8 best teams from each conference in the playoffs - we wouldn't want that to happen!
The current system gets the top 8 now. Hell, it even gets the 1v8 and 2v7 matchups. The 3-6 matchups are the only place that gets a little jumbled. And honestly, who cares?
this
Get better then 🤷🏻♂️
Real reason is because the playoffs would be dumber if almost every series was a rematch of division rivals you’re already played 4 times. Also ensures you have a minimum of 1 team from each division in the semis of the conference championship round.
Go to NHL.com and click on standings/wild card and you'll see all you need to know.
I'm rapidly closing in on the age where I believe it's fair and expected to be "stuck in my ways". Nowhere does this make me happier than following sports.
- The Big 10 should have 10 teams, unless we can somehow boot MSU and get away with nine.
- The MLB playoffs are four teams, playing a pair of seven-game series to culminate in a World Series that ends well before Halloween.
- March Madness... actually, it's fine, I think the play-in games are unnecessary, but that's a minor nitpick and they're easily ignored.
- And the NHL has the Patrick, Adams, Norris, and Smythe Divisions. Top four make the playoffs, setting up a genuine Wales/Campbell conference championship.
So I'm with you, but it isn't too complicated. Top three from each division, next two in the conference regardless of division. So it's possible (and has happened) for a division to get five teams. But you'll have at least one cross-divisional first-round matchup.
I wish NBA and NHL would just play everyone in their conference 3 times, then play every team in the other conference once (and switch where it is played each year). Or you could just get rid of conferences all together and just play every team home and away. 58-62 game regular season is much shorter, but every game would be more meaningful. Less back to backs for players, which means less resting, but the intensity of each game goes up because it means more.
But obviously gate receipt would suffer, so it'll never happen.
I'm a hockey casual, but it's really not that complicated in baseball or football. Don't love the NBA play in system tbf.
Quite the opposite, With 18 teams, I'm not a fan of no divisions in the Big Ten
Why not take it further? Why even have conferences, just everyone play everyone and do a 1-16 playoff? Extra not confusing.
Not that I'd prefer it that way, but the actual cutoff point (between no alignment at all, lots of sub-divisions) could be arbitrarily anywhere in the middle.
I'm sure it's been covered in other comments about creating rivalries, travel, TV deals, etc. While some of those issues aren't as big as they used to be, even today rivalries could still beneift from divisonal alignments.
Leaders and Legends? /s
The NFL's 12 team playoff arrangement was perfect based on the length of it's regular season, and they made a mistake changing from that. The old MLB playoff system, pre-wildcard was good too, since it refelcted the extremely long and statistically meaningful regular season results. MLB wildcards are stupid, since we have 162 games of data already.
But NHL hockey looks at the errors of other leagues' playoff structure and says, hold my Canadian lager. The NHL has an extremely long and very informative regular season, and then invites more than half the league to the playoffs anyway. The ice hockey champion is crowned in freaking June. The NHL would be more sensible if it were just a series of tournaments instead of having a regular season. If you're going to devalue the 80+ regular season games to almost nothing , then just skip to the playoff format right away. And for crying out loud, hockey, finish your season when it's still cold at least in Canada!
your argument assumes less playoff hockey is better than more playoff hockey. Or assumes less hockey overall.
Stanley cup playoffs is hands down the best professional post-season … why would anyone would advocate for less of the best thing ever. Or less hockey in general?
I half-agree with both of you. For some really stupid reason, I particularly enjoy sitting by the beach and watching the Stanley Cup playoffs on a 60-degree evening. Makes zero sense, but watching the Wings win the Cup while on Senior Week years ago is a special sports memory.
I find that any league without a relegation possibility annoying. But that's not for determining who goes to the playoffs; it's to get rid of the dingleberries hanging on at the bottom of the league year in and year out.