05-04-2021, 09:54 AMfishy Wrote: Idk why HO won’t just make it so that division winners get the top two seeds in each conference, and then go 1-8, 2-7, 3-6, 4-5, but I guess they even like copying the shitty aspects of the nhl
This, mostly.
I think it'll be way more fun to have the 1-8, 2-7, etc.
Doing it with just divisions leads to repetitive series and after a few seasons of the same 2v3 divisional first round matchups, it'll get boring and stale. You don't have to do it this way to create rivalries, they do that just from playing teams in their own division more. I've found playing different teams in the playoffs every season (Yes children, NOLA used to actually make the playoffs a whole bunch, I swear) much more fun. And rivalries got built regardless from the playoffs. I mean hell, New Orleans' biggest rival that's come from the playoffs is Buffalo, and we've only played twice haha.
I do believe Head Office should forego the "divisional round", and just have The division winners 1 and 2, and then 3-8 can be conference points based. This means the idea they had with the wildcards still work, as we could just as easily have 5 from one division and 3 from the other as much as we'd get a 4-4 split.
Time for JoeK and the GMs with actual brains to get vocal in GM Chat
I think it'll be way more fun to have the 1-8, 2-7, etc.
Doing it with just divisions leads to repetitive series and after a few seasons of the same 2v3 divisional first round matchups, it'll get boring and stale. You don't have to do it this way to create rivalries, they do that just from playing teams in their own division more. I've found playing different teams in the playoffs every season (Yes children, NOLA used to actually make the playoffs a whole bunch, I swear) much more fun. And rivalries got built regardless from the playoffs. I mean hell, New Orleans' biggest rival that's come from the playoffs is Buffalo, and we've only played twice haha.
I do believe Head Office should forego the "divisional round", and just have The division winners 1 and 2, and then 3-8 can be conference points based. This means the idea they had with the wildcards still work, as we could just as easily have 5 from one division and 3 from the other as much as we'd get a 4-4 split.
Time for JoeK and the GMs with actual brains to get vocal in GM Chat
05-05-2021, 06:24 PM(This post was last modified: 05-05-2021, 08:10 PM by DrunkenTeddy.)
I personally like having divisions because it encourages more rivalries by playing the same teams more often than the others in the conference. The playoffs also feel more predictable than 1-8 type playoffs because those usually reseed in round 2 and that causes some issues with creating playoff brackets for PTs. If they don't reseed then you're going to have some weird matchups where team 8 beats team 1 then gets the easiest matchups the rest of the way.
EPL does fine with rivalries without having divisions(just an example). People would still be interested in seeing BUF/HAM/TOR/CHI square up simply because the best teams are facing off, doesn’t matter what division they’re in.
I’ve been with Texas since S50 (not that impressive in the grand scheme but still 10 seasons) and I couldn’t even tell you who our rivals are. If I have to go back more than ten seasons to talk about a rival, it’s certainly that that relevant today.
05-05-2021, 06:24 PMDrunkenTeddy Wrote: I personally like having divisions because it encourages more rivalries by playing the same teams more often than the others in the conference. The playoffs also feel more predictable than 1-8 type playoffs because those usually reseed in round 2 and that causes some issues with creating playoff brackets for PTs. If they don't reseed then you're going to have some weird matchups where team 8 beats team 1 then gets the easiest matchups the rest of the way.
If an 8 seed beats a 1 seed they’re deserving of having an easier path through the rest of the playoffs. The NHLs playoff format, if the SHL implements it, would devalue the regular season. I’m not advocating for abolishing divisions, and we’d still likely get a decent number of intra-divisional matchups if we seed 1-8. I feel like going 1-8 with the two division winners as the top two seeds in the conference is the best of both worlds;
1. Conferences matter again for the old heads
2. Division winners get rewarded with a top two seed
3. Regular season success gets appropriately rewarded
4. Divisional rivalries still gonna happen
5. Likely going to see more competitive later round matchups
By going with the NHLs format, the potential exists for punishing teams for something outside of their control; being in a stacked division. I don’t understand why we wouldn’t work to avoid punishing teams for being in loaded divisions in a fake sim league that doesn’t have to consider travel
05-06-2021, 07:12 AM(This post was last modified: 05-06-2021, 07:13 AM by RomanesEuntDomus.)
05-05-2021, 11:23 PMfishy Wrote:
05-05-2021, 06:24 PMDrunkenTeddy Wrote: I personally like having divisions because it encourages more rivalries by playing the same teams more often than the others in the conference. The playoffs also feel more predictable than 1-8 type playoffs because those usually reseed in round 2 and that causes some issues with creating playoff brackets for PTs. If they don't reseed then you're going to have some weird matchups where team 8 beats team 1 then gets the easiest matchups the rest of the way.
If an 8 seed beats a 1 seed they’re deserving of having an easier path through the rest of the playoffs. The NHLs playoff format, if the SHL implements it, would devalue the regular season. I’m not advocating for abolishing divisions, and we’d still likely get a decent number of intra-divisional matchups if we seed 1-8. I feel like going 1-8 with the two division winners as the top two seeds in the conference is the best of both worlds;
1. Conferences matter again for the old heads
2. Division winners get rewarded with a top two seed
3. Regular season success gets appropriately rewarded
4. Divisional rivalries still gonna happen
5. Likely going to see more competitive later round matchups
By going with the NHLs format, the potential exists for punishing teams for something outside of their control; being in a stacked division. I don’t understand why we wouldn’t work to avoid punishing teams for being in loaded divisions in a fake sim league that doesn’t have to consider travel
sums it up quite nicely!
The idea to create more rivalries through divisions that @DrunkenTeddy mentioned is a valid one in theory, but I in practice it just isn't happening all that much. And even if it was, you are paying for it with a huge competitional imbalance between divisions which creates a very uneven playing field as we have seen - and it isn't an issue that everyone is subjected to from time to time, but seems to be something that persists in the same places for years while not being a factor in others as we have seen over the last few seasons. It just doesn't seem like a trade-off that is worth it. Rivalries are born through other things anyway, like Forum and Discord interactions or frequent late playoff-matchups, and not by throwing teams into each other again and again in largely meaningless regular season games, which also arbitrarily limit your rivalry options to the teams you randomly happened to end up in a Division with.
If the sim doesn't offer a specific re-seeding option then we can just as well go with the classic 1-8 format without any added bonus for the team who led a division. And if the #8 Seed actually manages to beat the #1 Seed at some point (not that I really believe that to happen very often, if at all), then why would we want to insist on re-seeding to make things as difficult as possible for that the rest of the day? If a team manages to beat the best team in their Conference in a seven game series they deserve whatever luck the match-up situation might present them with.
05-06-2021, 07:12 AMRomanesEuntDomus Wrote: If the sim doesn't offer a specific re-seeding option then we can just as well go with the classic 1-8 format without any added bonus for the team who led a division. And if the #8 Seed actually manages to beat the #1 Seed at some point (not that I really believe that to happen very often, if at all), then why would we want to insist on re-seeding to make things as difficult as possible for that the rest of the day? If a team manages to beat the best team in their Conference in a seven game series they deserve whatever luck the match-up situation might present them with.
I feel the biggest issue with no reseeding wouldn't be rewarding the #8 seed if they managed to eliminate the #1 seed, but that suddenly the #4 seed gets the "easy" matchup in the conference semi finals while the #2 seed has a very tough matchup with the #3 seed. So you're punishing the teams that came in 2nd and 3rd and rewarding the one coming in 4th and 8th.
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05-06-2021, 08:32 AM(This post was last modified: 05-06-2021, 08:35 AM by RomanesEuntDomus.)
05-06-2021, 07:59 AMSegi Wrote:
05-06-2021, 07:12 AMRomanesEuntDomus Wrote: If the sim doesn't offer a specific re-seeding option then we can just as well go with the classic 1-8 format without any added bonus for the team who led a division. And if the #8 Seed actually manages to beat the #1 Seed at some point (not that I really believe that to happen very often, if at all), then why would we want to insist on re-seeding to make things as difficult as possible for that the rest of the day? If a team manages to beat the best team in their Conference in a seven game series they deserve whatever luck the match-up situation might present them with.
I feel the biggest issue with no reseeding wouldn't be rewarding the #8 seed if they managed to eliminate the #1 seed, but that suddenly the #4 seed gets the "easy" matchup in the conference semi finals while the #2 seed has a very tough matchup with the #3 seed. So you're punishing the teams that came in 2nd and 3rd and rewarding the one coming in 4th and 8th.
Didn't that kind of re-seeding get discarded in real life as well? In any case, having a playoff tree that remains consistent throughout the postseason is actually an advantage in regards to some of the things Teddy mentioned, like Playoff Predictions. At the end of the day, if you want to win the Cup you have to be ready to beat everyone anyway, if getting slightly lucky or not in the second round breaks your team, then you are probably not meant to be a cup-winner anyway. Especially since these unfair match-ups you mentioned happen just as much, if not more so, in our current divisional system, where some teams are consistently stuck with much tougher opposition than others - not just for one series or one playoff campaign, but for years.
05-06-2021, 07:59 AMSegi Wrote: I feel the biggest issue with no reseeding wouldn't be rewarding the #8 seed if they managed to eliminate the #1 seed, but that suddenly the #4 seed gets the "easy" matchup in the conference semi finals while the #2 seed has a very tough matchup with the #3 seed. So you're punishing the teams that came in 2nd and 3rd and rewarding the one coming in 4th and 8th.
Didn't that kind of re-seeding get discarded in real life as well? In any case, having a playoff tree that remains consistent throughout the postseason is actually an advantage in regards to some of the things Teddy mentioned, like Playoff Predictions. At the end of the day, if you want to win the Cup you have to be ready to beat everyone anyway, if getting slightly lucky or not in the second round breaks your team, then you are probably not meant to be a cup-winner anyway. Especially since these unfair match-ups you mentioned happen just as much, if not more so, in our current divisional system, where some teams are consistently stuck with much tougher opposition than others - not just for one series or one playoff campaign, but for years.
I don't know how different leagues around the world handle their playoffs, but in Switzerland, we still do reseeding. And I gotta say, in a league without any divisions or conferences, I much prefer it that way.
Also, I'm absolutely not saying we currently have a great playoff format. In fact I think, there is no such thing as a perfect one. Having a fixed bracket from the start would be great for reasons already stated, but it does come with forcing weird matchups sometimes. And obviously to win the cup, you have to beat everyone, but getting eliminated in any round is a different experience to just making it one round further. And I imagine, getting eliminated in the 2nd round as the #3 seed while the #4 has an easy series would lead to similar feel bad moments as we have now.
I'm honestly fine with any 16 team format, but I don't think, there's a clear best one among the different options, we have.
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We did some further checking and our playoff format options are as follows:
1. NHL format, top 3 per div plus 2 wildcards per conference
2. Top team per div for 1/2, 1 plays 8, 2 plays 7, etc. Round 2 is reseeded.
I've been discussing this with a bunch of people and wanted to air my thoughts on it.
- With the NHL format let's look at the great lakes division now, we have 1 division that's packed with strong teams, that division would play itself more in the NHL format and it would mean less chance of seeing the same conference finals over and over again. In the 1-8 format the top team would play the worst in the conference first, then again in the next round. It's very likely in this format that the conference finals will be between two great lakes teams (based on the last few seasons) in this scenario.
- The NHL format allows us to eliminate the break between round 1 and 2 in the playoffs because it doesn't reseed, so we won't need a few days break for people to do a prediction, people have been very vocal against.
- The 1-8 system gives us more unique 1st round playoff matchups, and with reseeding it won't cause a weird advantage to low teams that get lucky in round 1, but that isn't an issue with the other format either unless you want to argue that the disparity between divisions is that great that being 4th in GL gives a massive advantage over being 1st.
I think those are the biggest points, there are some others that have been talked about such as realism and similarity to the NHL that lean a bit in the NHL format's favor, but ultimately I don't think this decision makes or breaks the league either way.
05-06-2021, 03:12 PMDrunkenTeddy Wrote: We did some further checking and our playoff format options are as follows:
1. NHL format, top 3 per div plus 2 wildcards per conference
2. Top team per div for 1/2, 1 plays 8, 2 plays 7, etc. Round 2 is reseeded.
I've been discussing this with a bunch of people and wanted to air my thoughts on it.
- With the NHL format let's look at the great lakes division now, we have 1 division that's packed with strong teams, that division would play itself more in the NHL format and it would mean less chance of seeing the same conference finals over and over again. In the 1-8 format the top team would play the worst in the conference first, then again in the next round. It's very likely in this format that the conference finals will be between two great lakes teams (based on the last few seasons) in this scenario.
- The NHL format allows us to eliminate the break between round 1 and 2 in the playoffs because it doesn't reseed, so we won't need a few days break for people to do a prediction, people have been very vocal against.
- The 1-8 system gives us more unique 1st round playoff matchups, and with reseeding it won't cause a weird advantage to low teams that get lucky in round 1, but that isn't an issue with the other format either unless you want to argue that the disparity between divisions is that great that being 4th in GL gives a massive advantage over being 1st.
I think those are the biggest points, there are some others that have been talked about such as realism and similarity to the NHL that lean a bit in the NHL format's favor, but ultimately I don't think this decision makes or breaks the league either way.
Thanks for taking the time to look into this! From how you summarized it, the second option seems like the perfect fit to me. If we end up with two Great Lakes teams in the finals because they beat everyone else along the way then great, so be it, the best teams made the finals as it should be. And I don't think having a small break to do predictions would be a big issue, we tend to have breaks betwen the rounds for various other reasons anyway, so I doubt this would create much of an extra hold-up if at all.
05-06-2021, 03:12 PMDrunkenTeddy Wrote: We did some further checking and our playoff format options are as follows:
1. NHL format, top 3 per div plus 2 wildcards per conference
2. Top team per div for 1/2, 1 plays 8, 2 plays 7, etc. Round 2 is reseeded.
I've been discussing this with a bunch of people and wanted to air my thoughts on it.
- With the NHL format let's look at the great lakes division now, we have 1 division that's packed with strong teams, that division would play itself more in the NHL format and it would mean less chance of seeing the same conference finals over and over again. In the 1-8 format the top team would play the worst in the conference first, then again in the next round. It's very likely in this format that the conference finals will be between two great lakes teams (based on the last few seasons) in this scenario.
- The NHL format allows us to eliminate the break between round 1 and 2 in the playoffs because it doesn't reseed, so we won't need a few days break for people to do a prediction, people have been very vocal against.
- The 1-8 system gives us more unique 1st round playoff matchups, and with reseeding it won't cause a weird advantage to low teams that get lucky in round 1, but that isn't an issue with the other format either unless you want to argue that the disparity between divisions is that great that being 4th in GL gives a massive advantage over being 1st.
I think those are the biggest points, there are some others that have been talked about such as realism and similarity to the NHL that lean a bit in the NHL format's favor, but ultimately I don't think this decision makes or breaks the league either way.
Thanks for taking the time to look into this! From how you summarized it, the second option seems like the perfect fit to me. If we end up with two Great Lakes teams in the finals because they beat everyone else along the way then great, so be it, the best teams made the finals as it should be. And I don't think having a small break to do predictions would be a big issue, we tend to have breaks betwen the rounds for various other reasons anyway, so I doubt this would create much of an extra hold-up if at all.
HO is going to be taking a poll on this one, so it's definitely not decided, but breaks between rounds (except finals) only started with FHM because we had to add it. Shortening the playoffs by a few days would be great, I don't think it's a moot thing. I think in either format we are going to see more of the same teams playing each other, it's just a matter of whether that's in round 1, 2, or 3.
05-06-2021, 03:47 PM(This post was last modified: 05-06-2021, 03:53 PM by RomanesEuntDomus.)
05-06-2021, 03:38 PMDrunkenTeddy Wrote:
05-06-2021, 03:33 PMRomanesEuntDomus Wrote: Thanks for taking the time to look into this! From how you summarized it, the second option seems like the perfect fit to me. If we end up with two Great Lakes teams in the finals because they beat everyone else along the way then great, so be it, the best teams made the finals as it should be. And I don't think having a small break to do predictions would be a big issue, we tend to have breaks betwen the rounds for various other reasons anyway, so I doubt this would create much of an extra hold-up if at all.
HO is going to be taking a poll on this one, so it's definitely not decided, but breaks between rounds (except finals) only started with FHM because we had to add it. Shortening the playoffs by a few days would be great, I don't think it's a moot thing. I think in either format we are going to see more of the same teams playing each other, it's just a matter of whether that's in round 1, 2, or 3.
Can you touch a bit more on what exactly led to the breaks being added after the switch to FHM, is it just due to re-seeding or are there other reasons as well? I agree that it generally would be good if we could get rid of them but I also don't think it would be that big of a problem if we didn't - plus there might be other ways to deal with predictions in case of re-seeding that might not even require breaks.
I do think it makes a difference if you end up playing the same team in round 1 vs round 3 by the way - it's a very different experience if you keep getting matched against the same team season after season because you happen to be in the same division compared to meeting that team in the finals repeatedly because both of you have fought your way through a long and intense playoff campaign.
I think the Division-issue expands beyond the pure playoff format as well. As we have seen in recent seasons there has been a significant imbalance between Divisions that I don't think will disappear even if parity keeps improving and expansion happens. It will likely always be a thing because it's basically unavoidable if we break our league down into such small units that sample sizes become so small that they can't accuractely reflect any kind of reasonable average anymore. If we can't prevent that from happeneing as I suspect, then the next logical step would be to at least diminish the effects of it by not having the arbitrary Division set-up play such a big role in determining our standings and seeding.
fishy![[Image: fishyshl.gif]](https://sig.grumpybumpers.com/host/fishyshl.gif)
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![[Image: WuTGq5J.png]](https://i.imgur.com/WuTGq5J.png)
sums it up quite nicely!
![[Image: QsZ1vOb.jpeg]](https://i.imgur.com/QsZ1vOb.jpeg)
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