Quote:
Originally Posted by getbak
It looks like it won't happen, but earlier in the season, when the Metro Division teams were doing so poorly, it looked like a real possibility that the Penguins second-round opponent was going to have a worse record than their first-round opponent. Even now, the third-place team in the Atlantic has more points than the second-place team in the Metro.
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A division leader is going to either play a 4th or 5th place team of a division. A wildcard team will always play a division leader. Hardly seems unfair. It's a far better system then the old one. Remember there was a legitimate chance that the Southeast division winner, and therefore 3rd seed, would not have qualified for the playoffs if not for being a division leader under the old system a couple times. Even the Northwest division leader wasn't that high on points.
Of course that may be because the divisions are not equal. Was the Metro division doing poorly on their own merit or were the Atlantic teams getting that extra boost from getting to play Buffalo and Florida 2 extra times?
I don't really see an issue with the format. Unless they come up with an even schedule, in which case divisions would be no more, there's going to be some 'unfairness.' Would Anaheim deserve to be ahead of Chicago and even Colorado in a 1-8 ranking? They are 11-7-0 against Central teams but against the Pacific they 16-3-2. They've only lost a single game to one of the bottom 4 teams in the division which include the by far worst team in the conference. It could easily be argued that the only reason they are beating Chicago in points is the division they play in. And in a reverse situation St. Louis is amazing against their own division but not good against the Pacific. So who knows how teams would match up if the schedules or divisions were even.
With the wild card there's again some room for the potential of uneven divisions to play a large part in which teams make it. However, the only way the 5th place team in a division makes it is if 5 teams in that division have more points than the 4th place team in the other. For that to occur it's pretty unlikely that that 5th place team is playing in a significantly weaker division, most of the time it would mean they are in the better division and more deserving to make the playoffs.
As for divisional games. The 2nd and 3rd teams of each division will play one another. That's 4 divisional rivals in the first round alone. There's about a 50/50 chance that the conference leaders will also play a division rival and barring an upset with a conference leader losing in the first round they will go on to play a divisional rival. That's a huge potential for divisional games. Of course divisional rival series now include teams like say the Kings and Flames who aren't exactly conventional rivals but that's a bit of the purpose in that with so many divisional playoff series new rivals will hopefully be created.