The Official NHL Playoffs Thread

[Assani Fisher]

[ QUOTE ]
These 10 ways to fix hockey are mostly terrible. I'll go through them, since I'm bored.

1 - Microphones on captains and coaches. Good idea. League would hate it, though.

2. Start the league a month later. Uh, no. Terrible, terrible idea. The NHL should not run until late June.

3. Change the schedule to include more inter-conference play. No, this is an awful idea too. Sure, Crosby gets one more game in Dallas or LA - it also means that the New York Islanders get to play in Vancouver, and that Florida-Phoenix match has already sold out.

4. Get back on ESPN - this I can agree with, but ESPN has to agree to give hockey a regular night and time at which we can see a game.

5. Let skaters in the shootout go without helmets - not possible, was rejected by the players' union and/or insurance. Otherwise, I'd agree.

6. Eliminate icing during the penalty kill. Awful idea. Power plays already determined one Cup winner (Carolina), they're given out on arbitrary penalties. It also creates a lot more stoppages in play.

7. Adopt the 2-3-2 format for every series. Hey, let's reduce the home team's minute edge even more! Awful.

8. Shootout after 40 minutes of overtime. There's not that many long overtimes anymore, so this is unnecessary. The NHL should instead put one commercial in the middle of each overtime period.

9. Move the league office to Atlanta - this is obviously facetious.

10. Contract to 26 teams. This is impossible. The NHL would have to eat the teams, making it a losing proposition. Talent isn't spread out too widely in the NHL - just about every team has a star player - but there are some markets that don't function well. Still, the league gains little and loses a lot of $ to do this.

[/ QUOTE ]

It sounds like you're approaching this from the aspect of what would make hockey most enjoyable FOR YOU. The writer was more worried about attracting the common fan. He doesn't care about the unfairness of a fluke penalty or reducing the home team's edge.

[Zurvan]

Despite what he said in the article, teams do have trouble making ice in hot weather. It's bad in Toronto in the spring - how bad would it be in Phoenix at the end of June?

The NBA & NHL will compete. It's just the way it is, and there's no (good) way to stop that, unless you remove NHL teams from any city with an NBA team.

[ QUOTE ]

The writer was more worried about attracting the common fan. He doesn't care about the unfairness of a fluke penalty or reducing the home team's edge.

[/ QUOTE ]

Shootouts in the playoffs MIGHT attract more funs. It WOULD damage the integrity of the game (IMO). That costs fans in the long run

[Triumph36]

Assani,

power plays aren't that exciting. Strong 5 on 5 play is where the NHL does its best work - that's where the game has the most skating and the most physicality. Power plays are mostly just cramming a bunch of guys in front of the net and hoping the puck makes it through the maze of sticks. Your argument is like saying the NBA would be doing better if they called more fouls. Foul shots, like power plays, can be exciting - but they're not what makes the game great at all.

Reducing the home team's edge makes the game more high-variance and costs fans - what's the point of following a team for 82 games, watching them win 50, only to see them bounced in the first round on a few bad bounces? 2-3-2 reduces travel costs, but not by enough to justify the advantage the road team gets from it. The NHL had 2-3-2, the Oilers won the Stanley Cup in 5 games by winning 3 in a row on their home ice, and they abandoned it.

[bluef0x]

Home ice plays a much more important role in the NHL than other sports.

[Cry Me A River]

Islanders buy-out Yashin's contract for $17.6 million.

Where does he play next year and for how much?

[Triumph36]

[ QUOTE ]
Home ice plays a much more important role in the NHL than other sports.

[/ QUOTE ]

not quite true. someone had a stat - i think it said basketball and football had bigger home ice edges.

it's also true that a team having home ice over another team does not ensure they have a large edge to begin with.

River,

Yashin will probably end up somewhere like Washington or Chicago. I think he's out of shape and is mostly a shell of himself - I imagine he will get something like 3-4 million though. With his history, there just can't be many playoff teams interested.

Yashin was a near HOF talent in his prime, a poor man's Mario Lemieux - just never had the desire to be great.

[bluef0x]

I'm not a big fan of all the intangibles of home ice/field/court, but yeah it exists. What I should have stated that home ice actually has advantages stated in the rulebook. Of course they can be negated and whatever, but it does matter. NBA you are playing on the same exact court setup as your home court, just tons of fans booing instead of cheering (not that it matters anymore, they play rap so frikin loudly during play).

“Home-court advantage isn’t very consistent from year to year, to repeat an earlier theme. The correlation between home-court advantage in 2001-02 and 2002-03 was just 32.9%, r squared 10.8%. One year is a small sample size, but that does seem to suggest that a lot of home-court advantage is random.”

If you look at graphs of home-field/court/ice advantage, they usually peak up and down like crazy.

[T-God]

Well, last chance tonight. Win this one and they're in decent shape for the rest of the series.


GOGOGOGOGOGOGO SENSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[theblackkeys]

Goal!

[T-God]

fk me