Login

Leoben · 11-17-2019, 09:20 PM

Ready for grading.

Everything can get stale after a while. Doing things the same way for long periods of time can become dull and predictable. Every now and then it is encouraged to shake things up and get away from the status quo. I’m not saying that now is one of these times. After fifty seasons the SHL seems to be as strong as ever and looks to continue for many more seasons. It seems like just yesterday we expanded and who would rule out more expansions in the future? If I were to change anything, it would be the playoffs.

I’m not going to touch Juniors because it’s just supposed to give players exposure to the playoffs so they can get a feel for it or something. It's good to get used to that disappointment early (go Raiders!). All the teams make it and that works for now I guess. No one will ever be happy there.

But I will look at the SHL and IIHF elimination rounds and see how things could be made a little more interesting. We can make them more unforgiving yet forgiving at the same time. Before this would even be considered (it won’t be), I would suggest a trial run in the IIHF. The only difference with the IIHF medal round is that there are no series’. It’s just a single loss elimination. The tournament I am proposing is double-loss. But I’ll get there.

I only tested this out with eight teams because honestly, ten is too many. There’s the unforgiving part. Every division champion goes through automatically, and then the other best two teams from the conference. This means a good team might get screwed over but so be it. It happens all the time. Get better. So we have a playoffs with eight teams. Perfect number.

Now in the playoffs, instead of every series being best-of-seven, we make it smaller. Say a best-of-three or a best-of-five series. My example below uses a best-of-five but that can be tweaked. This sounds less forgiving and it is but you have to lose two series’ before you go home. The only exception is the Challenge Cup Finals, which will still be a best-of-seven series. Each round produces an equal number of winners and losers. The winners advance and the losers drop to the losers’ bracket. However, they can still advance to the Challenge Cup by winning out.

Here is my example.

[Image: bracket.png]

So here are the pros and cons with such a setup.

Pros

The playoffs would be more exciting. This is, of course, subjective. Some people would hate it and think it is less exciting but it produces more matchups and a lot more interesting scenarios. It adds a new layer of unpredictability to the whole thing.

The series’ would go by much quicker if there were fewer games, obviously. A best of three or best of five can be over before you blink. Things might take longer but they would feel like they were moving faster.

Cons

Possibility of a longer off-season and fewer teams doing nothing. This is true but there are ways to counter that even if it means a losers’ league for a top draft pick or more lottery balls. It can be combated easily if they wanted it bad enough.

Honestly I can't think of any more cons but I'm sure other people can chime in.

At the end of the day, this probably won’t happen. The current system is fine and all that but sometimes it is fun to shake things up and look at different scenarios.

Bye now.

TheWoZy · 11-17-2019, 10:36 PM

good idea

Eggy216 · 11-17-2019, 11:11 PM

Interesting idea. I wonder, can STHS handle this?

Leoben · 11-17-2019, 11:26 PM

11-17-2019, 11:11 PMEggy216 Wrote: Interesting idea. I wonder, can STHS handle this?

Yea that's the other thing I wasn't sure on. Don't know how all that is set up in the sim! Never messed with that.

Eggy216 · 11-17-2019, 11:27 PM

11-17-2019, 11:26 PMMarc Bradford Wrote:
11-17-2019, 11:11 PMEggy216 Wrote: Interesting idea. I wonder, can STHS handle this?

Yea that's the other thing I wasn't sure on. Don't know how all that is set up in the sim! Never messed with that.

I feel like you might have to make a new sim file for each round in the loser's bracket, but I'm not entirely sure.

Navigation

Extra Menu

About us