Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Play-in game
The NHL and NHLPA are working toward realignment. (Weirdly last year, NHL tried to do it on their own, and NHLPA rejected it.) They are settling into a four-division setup, with the Eastern conference two divisions with eight teams each and the Wester conference two divisions with seven teams each.?
The first question is if this is unfair on its own. As Tyler noted however:
According to Jeff Sagarin, since 2005-06, the Eastern Conference has had 6, 7, 4, 9, 5, 8 and 6 of the top 16 teams in the NHL. They still got 56 playoff spots over that time, despite having just 45 teams who were amongst the 16 best in the NHL.
You can also think about MLB, which had until now 16 teams in the NL and 14 in the AL. Both leagues sent the same number of teams, and since the AL is the stronger league, that actually worked out pretty well for the last decade. That is, both leagues, in total, spend about the same amount in salary, so it would seem right that they both send the same number of teams. (I'd like to see the payroll breakdowns in the NHL, and see if they conform to the Sagarin ratings.)
Anyway, the Eastern conference in the NHL has been lucky all these years, so, to the extent that you have a different number of teams, it seems perfectly acceptable that it's the Eastern conference that gets the two extra teams.
Next is the play-in game. Rather than have the top four teams in each division advance, they've decided that the top three advance, and then the 4th place of one division plays the 5th place of the other division. The question therefore is what is the "fairest" way to have that setup.
1. Should it simply be a one-game affair (at the home of the 4th place team)?
2. Should it be a best two of three? (And in that case, should they make it the first two at the home of the 4th place team, or the last two for the 4th place team? Or alternating)
3. Or, as is my preference: the 4th place team simply needs to win one game, while the 5th place team needs to win two games? You get a double-drama of a series-clinching game. You get the obvious advantage to the 4th place team.
In all this, should we care about the imbalanced schedule? That say the 5th place team of the stronger division may have finished one point behind (or even ahead!) of the 4th place team of the weaker division?
This play-in setup will be a huge advantage to the division-winning team, since they'll have say an extra four days of rest compared to their opponent.
I'm all in favor of more playoffs, even to the point that all thirty teams are given a chance at a play-in.
Recent comments
Older comments
Page 1 of 151 pages 1 2 3 > Last ›Complete Archive – By Category
Complete Archive – By Date
FORUM TOPICS
Jul 12 15:22 MarcelsApr 16 14:31 Pitch Count Estimators
Mar 12 16:30 Appendix to THE BOOK - THE GORY DETAILS
Jan 29 09:41 NFL Overtime Idea
Jan 22 14:48 Weighting Years for NFL Player Projections
Jan 21 09:18 positional runs in pythagenpat
Oct 20 15:57 DRS: FG vs. BB-Ref
Apr 12 09:43 What if baseball was like survivor? You are eliminated ...
Nov 24 09:57 Win Attribution to offense, pitching, and fielding at the game level (prototype method)
Jul 13 10:20 How to watch great past games without spoilers