DanMcQ
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Post by DanMcQ on Jan 6, 2013 6:54:52 GMT -5
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jgalt
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Post by jgalt on Jan 6, 2013 13:54:01 GMT -5
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DanMcQ
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Post by DanMcQ on Jan 6, 2013 17:35:31 GMT -5
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hoyarooter
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Post by hoyarooter on Jan 7, 2013 3:46:17 GMT -5
So what will there be, twelve games before the playoffs start?
This season is ridiculous. Let's just skip the regular season, and start the playoffs with every team in.
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rosslynhoya
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Post by rosslynhoya on Jan 7, 2013 8:04:39 GMT -5
So what will there be, twelve games before the playoffs start? This season is ridiculous. Let's just skip the regular season, and start the playoffs with every team in. That actually makes sense. Do a quick round-robin (home-and-home within the division or conference) and use the results of that to seed tournament play with everyone in. The only downside is that the format might be so successful that we never go back to the old system. |
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Jan 7, 2013 11:21:57 GMT -5
Isn't the "regular season" just a massive money-making pre-season in the American sports calender? Certainly it is for both the NHL and NBA and increasingly it is seen that way in college basketball. (I hate the way more and more with each passing year what you do for the entire league schedule means NOTHING if you don't make a deep run in the NCAAs.)
But the NHL has been the worst offender of this forever; 80-odd games to.....eliminate the most awful, what, 8 teams? The "regular season" has become nothing more than a seeding excercise for the real season due to the runaway inflation of playoff games in all American sports.
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Boz
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Post by Boz on Jan 7, 2013 11:28:19 GMT -5
I don't disagree with your general point, but how is hockey the worst offender?
The NHL regular season and playoffs are an exact mirror of the NBA, including number of games played, number of teams that make the playoffs, and percentage of the league that makes the playoffs.
Ironically, I think the most tedious and far too long of all sports regular seasons is also the most meaningful: MLB. This remains the most difficult of all major team sports to make the post-season.
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jgalt
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Post by jgalt on Jan 7, 2013 12:44:13 GMT -5
They are going to play 48 games.
And man, those NFL playoff games this weekend were great!
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Jan 7, 2013 12:44:43 GMT -5
Has the NBA caught up with the NHL in numbers of playoff teams over total? I just meant that to my recollection growing up in Boston during the Bourque/Neely years I remember at that time anyway you had to be HORRIBLE to not make the playoffs in the NHL, more so even than the NBA at the time. Maybe I'm wrong about that? Since that time all other leagues have been banging away adding playoff rounds to catch up but it seems to me that it had been this way in hockey almost traditionally whereas the other leagues have been playing catch-up in their efforts to neuter their regular seasons.
I agree with you that with the 162 game regular season MLB has by far the least right to add playoff series'. I feel like their regular season would be too long at 120 games. But alas it seems American sports fans and journos are pretty easy to trick and that they simply want the excitement of games taken out of the regular season bucket and dumped in the "playoff" bucket. Ironically once this goes far enough it is easy enough to eliminate the regular season altogether and then you are left with....no playoffs! And boom! Games matter and are more exciting and I don't feel so fleeced for paying for tickets to the de facto pre-season. For the giant mess that NCAA football has becom this is their greatest strength: a regular season where the national championship is on the line every Saturday starting in September.
I think to me the most flagrant money-grab is the idea of having 5 game series' in the first round only to be followed by the real playoff rounds of 7 game series- a total admission that the first round isn't a real playoff round but they'd like some more ticket and beer money please.
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jgalt
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Post by jgalt on Jan 7, 2013 14:08:36 GMT -5
30 teams total, 16 playoff teams. The NHL and NBA are the same in this regard. And only this regard.
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Jan 7, 2013 14:33:56 GMT -5
Gotcha. Did the NHL pare down their playoff bids? I could have sworn that in the late 80s basically one team each from the Adams, Patrick etc did NOT make playoffs, maybe 2 but not nearly half. If so they are the only league moving in the right direction. Or is my memory totally failing me? Maybe it used to be 16 teams but over 24 total or something?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2013 14:45:40 GMT -5
In the early '80s, there were 21 NHL teams and 16 made the playoffs. Good times...
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jgalt
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Post by jgalt on Jan 7, 2013 14:46:32 GMT -5
Gotcha. Did the NHL pare down their playoff bids? I could have sworn that in the late 80s basically one team each from the Adams, Patrick etc did NOT make playoffs, maybe 2 but not nearly half. If so they are the only league moving in the right direction. Or is my memory totally failing me? Maybe it used to be 16 teams but over 24 total or something? Honestly, I am too young to remember back that far, but you are right the system was different. And it would have been from a smaller pool of teams. And it was division based back then. In 94 it moved to a system similar to todays system, with two conferences and eight teams from each conference. This all may change again soon though as they are going to have to move Winnipeg out of the East (and South East division). The idea to go back to divisions (four divisions, regionally based) was agreed upon by the NHL last year as you may remember, but the NHLPA rejected this. Too many teams make the playoffs in every american sport (except MLB I suppose), but I dont think it really matters. Sports are entertainment and playoffs, with their high stakes are very entertaining. |
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Jan 7, 2013 14:58:06 GMT -5
Yeah, 16 out of 21 is more like what I remember....hence the statement that the NHL was a pioneer of playoff inflation.
jgalt- see that's what I mean...you can't add excitement by inflating the number of playoffs teams without taking that excitement right out of the (much longer) regular season. If you look at leagues with no playoffs (NCAA fb for most part, EPL soccer) you see that what you actually have when you eliminate the playoffs is that you make the entire (again much longer) regular season into the playoffs. You just can't have both- a long regular season that means very little- and then a long playoff system. Well I guess you can have it, most people seem to be falling for it. But then again I'm amazed people have not started to get angry at the NFL for cramming 2 hours of ads down their throats for every game.
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Filo
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Post by Filo on Jan 7, 2013 15:29:53 GMT -5
But then again I'm amazed people have not started to get angry at the NFL for cramming 2 hours of ads down their throats for every game. Red Zone, baby! |
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jgalt
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Post by jgalt on Jan 7, 2013 16:35:30 GMT -5
Yeah, 16 out of 21 is more like what I remember....hence the statement that the NHL was a pioneer of playoff inflation. jgalt- see that's what I mean...you can't add excitement by inflating the number of playoffs teams without taking that excitement right out of the (much longer) regular season. If you look at leagues with no playoffs (NCAA fb for most part, EPL soccer) you see that what you actually have when you eliminate the playoffs is that you make the entire (again much longer) regular season into the playoffs. You just can't have both- a long regular season that means very little- and then a long playoff system. Well I guess you can have it, most people seem to be falling for it. But then again I'm amazed people have not started to get angry at the NFL for cramming 2 hours of ads down their throats for every game. Yeah no doubt. I think there are improvements to be made such as shortening the NHL, MLB, and NBA regular seasons. And there is a pet project out there exploring what CBB would look like with a soccer style relegation system and it seems interesting. But big changes like this wont take place unless fans stop watching because of the playoff system, and based on the way fans are going back to the NHL after a lock out, sports leagues dont have much to worry about. |
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Jan 7, 2013 17:27:07 GMT -5
I'd add to your suggestion a no-brainer to make basketball and football in particular much more exciting and shorter....eliminate times out. We need to stop thinking of them as inevitable. They are the product our compulsion of over-legislating/over-complicating sports that infects us on this side of the Atlantic and just so happens to make a lot of people a lot of tv money which is the main reason we have way too many of them. I also sense in it an attempt to raise the profile of the coach at the expense of the players for no good reason- something for which less than pure motivation might be guessed at. At the very least minimize them- no excuse at all for the amount of TO's ruining college basketball and making football even longer.
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