With the NBA and NHL seasons wrapping up, it’s a good time to visit something which has always bugged me. In North American sports, there are two types of playoff format: the knockout tournament (NFL, MLS); and the best-of series (MLB, NBA, NHL).
The NFL and MLS employing knockout tournaments for their playoff structure makes sense because their seasons naturally pit teams against each other in a single game before moving onto the next opponent, usually a full week later. It’s not even physically possible to play a series of games in a short manner for either of these sports. Therefore their playoff formats follow suit — the NFL culminating in the crown jewel of title competitions, the Super Bowl; and MLS culminating in yet another knockout tournament (the cadence to a soccer season is one of constant intermingling between league games and various league and non-league tournament games).
With MLB, a best-of series championship makes sense because that’s how the baseball season is naturally played. Baseball teams match up against each other for a series of games at a time before moving onto the next opponent. These series are typically 3 games, but can be anywhere from 2 to 4 games — with some being as long as 5 or 6 depending on make-up games. Indeed, one measure of a baseball team is how many series they’ve won/lost throughout the season. So it was only natural that when the rival National and American Leagues got together in 1903 to crown a champion that the format would be a series — and an extended one at that. Waffling between a 9- and 7-game series in the early days, the World Series would become the de facto way of crowning a champion in North American sports.
But the NBA and NHL do not incorporate series-play into their normal seasons. They are much more like NFL and MLS in their season scheduling than MLB — playing teams once before moving onto the next opponent, albeit at a more frequent pace than the NFL and MLS. Constructing their entire playoff format as a string of best-of series seems unnatural to the normal cadence of either sport. What can be done about that? What alternatives are there?
Let’s do something different
First of all, let me make clear that I am not advocating for the removal of the Stanley Cup Final as a series. The same goes for the NBA Finals. I do believe there is merit in allowing the championship in either sport to breathe — to not be one game which can be decided by a key injury or suspension. Beyond that, the history of these two championship rounds goes back decades if not a century. Those histories are rich and meaningful. We should be elevating them higher than they already are.
It’s the lead-up to both championships that has people bemoaning every year. Endless rounds of seven-game series, all constructed to seemingly weed out the chaff while maybe getting an 8 seed upset over a 1 seed. It is immediately daunting to any fan whose team is entering the playoffs: I gotta sit through four rounds of this? Let’s go through some of the cons:
- Matchups: A lower seeded team, which happens to match up well against a higher seeded team’s style of play, could be an arbitrary spoiler.
- Unbalanced Playoff March: Each team has a unique path through the playoffs, only playing against a fraction of the other playoff teams.
- Cadence: Each sport’s season has teams playing a new opponent every few days. But the playoffs lock you into a duel against one opponent which you must defeat four times in order to move past.
- Length of Time: Both leagues start their playoffs in late April and run through the end of June. That’s a long time!
- Resting or Rusting: Every year there is a team, which has won its round quickly, having to sit around and wait for its next-round opponent to finish their series.
- Few Guaranteed Home Games: All teams are only guaranteed 2 home games at the outset of the playoffs.
A true post-season
If we replaced the first three rounds of either playoffs with a mini-season, what would that look like? The schedules for both the NBA and NHL usually feature 3 games per week (sometimes there will be 2; sometimes there will be 4; but most times there are 3, so we’ll go with that).
Every team in a conference plays each other. Gone are the days of playing only a fraction of the total teams in the playoffs. At 8 teams per conference, each team would play each other twice (home and away) for a total of 14 games. This would take 4-5 weeks at the normal season cadence of ~3 games per week. For comparison, to get through three rounds of the current playoff format, a team would play at least 12 games and at most 21.
Every team is guaranteed at least 7 home games. This would be the equivalent of lower-seeded teams making it into the third round of the current playoff format. Show me an owner that wouldn’t salivate at the thought of having 7 extra (premium) home games just by making the playoffs.
No resting or rusting. There is always a debate in the current playoff format when a team sweeps its opponent and has to sit and wait for the next round to start. Does the rest do them good; or will sitting too long cause them to get rusty? The 14-game post-season would play out regardless of any one team locking things up. No more rest or rust. Furthermore, teams would be incentivized to play out the entire schedule as playoff payouts would be determined by the place they finished. Tiebreakers would be determined by playoff seed.
Conference Champions match up for a seven-game final. I told you the Stanley Cup and NBA Finals weren’t going away. The winners of each 14-game conference post-season will square off in a normal seven-game series to determine the league champion. The important part of this is that neither team will get to rest or rust prior to the finals due to winning their post-season early. Both conference post-seasons will end on the same night, guaranteeing that both championship teams will have similar time off leading into their championship matchup. At this point, there can be a few days to a week between the end of the post-season and the beginning of the championship series. This time can be used to both allow players to heal as well as hype up the matchup in the media. And since this is the only best-of series in the playoffs, the media can go crazy with the matchup comparisons — thus elevating either championship round for both leagues. The Stanley Cup Final goes back to being truly unique compared to the rest of the NHL playoffs.
The end result is a playoff format that will shave off weeks of time from the one currently used. It will also feel lighter and more nimble due to the 14-game mini-season not overtaxing the use of the best-of series. And it will put the respective leagues championship rounds on a pedestal as something truly different — worthy of a best-of-seven format against a single team.