[getbak]

There are many problems with the "Points After Elimination" idea, and they're probably bigger problems than what we have now.


The most obvious problem is that it will encourage teams to be as bad as possible as early as possible, in a race to get eliminated. Sure, it might lead to some teams playing better for the last couple of weeks of the season (which is already the most exciting part of the regular season anyway), but it could also lead to some really bad hockey earlier in the season as GMs try to get eliminated ASAP.

This system encourages the exact type of behaviour people want to stop. Yes, players will never try to lose, they're too competitive for that, but coaches and management can make decisions that are against the best interest of their team's performance to make them worse. Once eliminated, they can change strategies and make an effort to win. Obviously, it isn't as easy as flipping a switch, so there are no guarantees they can turn things around, but it does give a team like that an edge over one that is truly bad, and has been consistently bad all season.


The biggest problem I see with it is that even if teams don't intentionally tank sooner, it creates too small of a sample size, and amplifies the value of every single point for those late-season games.

Over an 82 game season, where every team plays 41 home and 41 road games, the ebbs and flows of a season cancel each other out over the long term. That isn't so much the case in a 10 or 15 game sample.

Over the full length of the season, the best teams usually win 65-75% of their games and the worst teams usually lose 65-75% of their games. Over a random 10-15 game sample, those numbers are going to vary much more widely, and will be more easily impacted by things like long home stands and road trips or the quality of the teams being played in the 10 game segment.

Every team in the league is likely to have a ten-game segment during the season where they get 12 or more points. Every team in the league is likely to have a ten-game segment where they get 6 or fewer points. It seems arbitrary to reward the teams who have a big streak late and punish the teams who have a big slump late, when over 82 games, their records are nearly identical.


The worst case would be a team that starts a big winning streak just before they get officially eliminated, so all of the points they get just push back their elimination date further and hurt their draft position (without really putting them any closer to a playoff spot).

When Buffalo was eliminated, the Blue Jackets were one point ahead of the Leafs and near the brink themselves (19 points out with 13 games left). Then, the Jackets started a big run and have won 10 of their last 11 games (Boston also went into a slump around the same time, so they weren't accumulating enough points to eliminate the Jackets). Toronto just kept on sucking and was eliminated with 11 games left in the season (and have earned 4 points since). The Jackets were just finally eliminated after Boston's win on Tuesday with 6 games left (and have 0 points since).

The Jackets started winning at a time when they had no realistic chance of closing the gap and making the playoffs but weren't yet officially out. The system wants to reward teams who play well down the stretch, but actually punishes them if they start playing well too soon.