Comments on: A Modest Proposal

By: Baroque

Baroque — Sun, 02 May 2010 17:54:47 +0000

I have no problems with travel discrepancies.

Suck it up, buttercup, and quit whining. As for wanting more teams from the East to do better in the playoffs, tell them that it's easy - just DON'T SUCK SO MUCH for a change, and the junior varsity will have more teams advancing.

By: Gander

Gander — Sun, 02 May 2010 17:37:37 +0000

Dude, you're a genius. The East is getting less and less relevant. Let's make them count. Maybe playing more Western teams will make those lazy Easterners rethink about their teams…

By: Misopogon

Misopogon — Sun, 02 May 2010 14:11:41 +0000

J.J. -

I have a pet realignment that I've been peddling for years. It's a bit similar, but much more radical. It gets rid of Conferences altogether, because conferences are so uneven (in level of play and in level of travel) and really have no historical value.

Maybe I'll bug Discher to let me vent mine.

Nice thoughts man!

By: Andy

Andy — Sun, 02 May 2010 14:10:34 +0000

I agree. There are issues of course, but you have tackled them really well. The one reason it will never happen? The risk of losing all the East coast teams and East coast media.

I would like a baseball-ish system though with two conferences split into East, central and east

By: J.J. from Kansas

J.J. from Kansas — Sun, 02 May 2010 12:06:51 +0000

Anonymous, that's an excellent point. The original thought was to get rid of East/West conferences (one conference would get the Pacific and the other the Northwest divisions), but that only seemed to add travel for travel's sake during the regular season. I didn't think that would work very well to actually help grow the game.

The thing is that you're exactly right that there's already travel bias in the playoffs for the west. You're never going to eliminate luck from the picture and luck of the draw is going to be part of that. Maybe it would let some of the Eastern writers finally appreciate the playoff road the Wings have had for the past 19 years and how much more amazing that makes those four cups.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 02 May 2010 04:14:23 +0000

I'm all for this idea. It's frustrating to see Pittsburgh have such an easy road back to the finals, their toughest matchup will be Boston or Philly next round…but really, that matchup is no tougher than, say, Red Wings v. Coyotes, or Chicago v. Nashville, or Vancouver v. LA (all round one matchups, duh!). Boston/Philly will push Pittsburgh, but I have no doubt that Pitt will prevail in 6 or 7 games. IT just doesn't seem fair.

I actually heard this argument discussed on NHL Live one day not that long ago…they argued against the 16-seed pooled system because of potential nightmarish traveling prospects for round one, e.g. Vancouver v. Florida or San Jose v. Montreal. My response to that? Travelling-wise, the current system is unfairly biased in favor the Eastern conference, because the simple facts is distances between teams in teh East is less than the West. So, why not make it a level playing field (in terms of travel)? The it becomes the luck of the draw…and teams such as DETROIT won't have the unfair burden of travel wearing them out by the time the finals roll around a week earlier than originally scheduled against Pittsburgh.

By: beanie

beanie — Sun, 02 May 2010 01:12:41 +0000

It's how many other sports conduct their finals and makes sense.

By: farfromthenorm

farfromthenorm — Sat, 01 May 2010 22:19:12 +0000

Amen. It's simply rediculous (to me anyway) that the remaining Eastern Conference teams won't have home ice when they get to the Finals, no matter which team makes it out of the West. This was a subpar season in the eyes of many Wings fans and they still ended up with more points than all but two of those teams in the East.

Great read--kudos.