OT: Kings/NHL demonstrates regular season meaningless. Again.
Congrats to the Kings and the L.A. fans on a great victory last night. The Kings were an 8 seed, meaning last playoff contender in their conference. With 6 games to go in the regular season the Kings were not even qualified for the 16 team (out of 30 total NHL teams) NHL playoffs. But they dominated the competition to secure the Cup, with a record for the playoffs of a remarkable 16-4.
While an 8 seed hasn't won the Cup before, it's actually a regular occurence that a low seed gets to the finals--8 times snce 2000, a team seeded 5-8 has made it to the Cup Finals (New Jersey, the Kings opponent, was a 6 seed) . And many teams seeded below 3 have won. As Red Wings fans know, a great regular season, even setting point records, doesn't mean you won't go out in the first round.
When my friends ask me why I don't watch Wngs games at home until the playoffs, this is why. I prefer watching regular season games that actually mean something. I know a large majority of hockey fans don't agree with me at all, and thank goodness for the NHL that they don't. It makes me even more thankful for college football, with a regular season that is critical, and soon to have a playoff system that, no matter which alternative goes in, will ensure that the regular season continues to matter and that regular season excellence is rewarded, whle still crowning a champion on the field.
Not to be disrespectful...but who cares? The regular season is a time for a ton of hockey. So, if you love hockey the regular season is great. It's all entertainment, and clearly it meant something if the Kings had to get hot just to get in. The playoffs are a whole different type of hockey, so just enjoy both. I love it just because it's more hockey.
I agree with that, but would also add that I remember a time when regular season NHL hockey just wasn't watchable. Now it is, and that's the only standard I'd judge by.
But the Kings started peaking at the right time after a coaching change and the trade deadline and barely got in. Wouldn't that make the season important?
As someone who did watch basically every Kings game this year, there was a stretch in January where they were borderline unwatchable. The new coach turned things around...slowly. The Carter trade took some pressure off the guys who were pressing and better slotted the line combos.
That's not entirely true, the "barely got in". Everyone is looking at this the wrong way, in that everyone is treating it like the Kings were a 16-seed in the NCAA tourney that made a miraculous run proving how unpredictable and crazy any tournament is.
The reality is that the Kings were 5 points ahead of Calgary in the standings, not a huge margin and they had to keep winning to ensure they got in, but still comfortable enough that they were getting in.
And about the whole 8-seed miracle run thing? Beating the 1-2-3 seeds? Looking at the standings you have Phoenix at 97, San Jose at 96, and LA at 95. The last two games of the season the Kings lost 2 games to San Jose, one in a shootout and one in OT. If they had won both games, they would have been Division Champs and a 3 seed. So the it's not a case of the Regular season not mattering, as it is Seed Numbers.
The NHL has long had 'two' seasons, the regular and the playoff. This isn't a case where the regular season is meaningless. In my years as an observer/fan of the NHL, I have too often seen where the biggest difference in the two seasons was what the referee's did/didn't call in the two seasons. I have always wanted to the seasons to be called the same. I thought the last few years they have been better about being consistent, however, this year's playoff season was very brutal. The NHL was very inconsistent on calls, especially in the early rounds as there were a lot of injuries.
Glad for the Kings to get a cup, they have waited 45 yrs.
So much this. There's a reason the NHL has a trophy for the regular season champion - the President's Cup. Back in the Original 6 days it was often the more impressive trophy to win - teams wanted to win the President's Cup over the Stanley.
Hey OP, does our Big Ten Championship Banner that we won in basketball last year "Not matter" since we didn't win the BTT in Indy? Tell that to Novak or Stu.
The games matter anyway. Sure, playoff seeding and home ice/court don't always mean everything, but they mean something.
You can't compare what the Conference has determined will crown a champion for decades with a 15 year old tournament really just designed to make money (sorry, determine the NCAA Tournament birth). And actually, in the big picture, you have the same problem in college basketball. Novak and Stu's Big Ten Championship (and whole regular season for everyone) is devalued because of the emphasis on the NCAA Tournament. Locally we'll always remember them for the banner over a first round flame out vs. Ohio (YTO); but nationally no one cared about that vs. a deep tourney run.
I said regular season excellence in the NHL does not, or at least, is not that important. Of course the title win in any sport is huge. Though your comarison is questionable since the least legitimate contests in sports IMO are the conference tournaments, which say "hey, didn't like that regular season? Here's another chance!" Why do we have conference tournaments after having all the teams play each other twice during the regular season? Money I know, but nothing else than that.
You're changing what you say here. Does regular season excellence not matter? Or is the NHL regular season meaningless (your thread title)?
Playoff hockey has always been about 2 things: The hottest goalie and the hottest team. You have both, you win the title.
You mention that the LA Kings are the 1st 8 seed to win a title, they also went through the 1, 2, and 3 seeds. The Giants a few years ago won as the 6 seed, went thought the 1, 2 and 3 seeds. Those are extremely rare happenings. Which actually would argue against your point. The regular season does matter a ton. Because you're much more likely to win if you're a higher seed. Just becuase there are occassional exceptions (like this year) doesn't mean the premise is meaningless.
You made the right argument in your post. The reason the regular season is important is because the higher seeds have an easier road to the cup. Home Ice advantage is usually a pretty big deal in hockey. This year the Kings had to win on the road on a regular basis in order to win the cup...and they did.
The fact that they are the first 8 seed to ever win the cup shows exactly why the regular season is so important.
a "pretty big deal" in playoff hockey. And if high seeds are less likely to get to the finals than in other sports, it is also not true that high seeds have "an easier" road to the Cup. And the fact that so many low seeds get to the finals, compared to other sports, shows the opposite of your conclusion.
You are much less likely in the NHL, than in other sports, to get to the finals as a high seed, that is a fact of math based upon the numbers I provided, which (to my knowledge) are not duplicated in other sports. That means that regular season excellence is far less relevant than in other sports, which leads again to the conclusion that the regular season is, if not meaningless, then less important to final success than in other sports. That is s shame IMO.
So since 2000 there have been 8 5-8 seeds to make the finals.
That means you have twice as good a shot of making the finals if you're seeded 1-4. 16:8. So that means the regular season and seeding does matter. It gives you twice as good a shot.
Do you have numbers from other sports that are better than 2-1 based on your seed?
Are you talking about the Prince of Wales Trophy? Because the President's Trophy was started in 1985-86.
The Columbus Blue Jackets would like to offer a dissenting opinion on how much the regular season matters.
Not only do we see this in the NHL, but we just saw the Cardinals win the WS as one of the last teams in, the last team to make into the NFL playoffs winning the Super Bowl (Steelers, Packers). It does seem to happen more often in the NHL, but can that attributed to a hot goalie?
this is the first time it has ever happened in the NHL (the 8 seed winning the cup).
No league currently operating has the perfect system that.... maximizes revenue, determines the most worthy champion, prevents tanking, keeps fans interested and keeps competitive balance.
Some league needs to be bold and incorporate relegation with a staggered playoff and a reduced regular season to come up with an improved system, but it is extrememly difficult to answer all of the above questions in one system and probably impossible.
CFB and NFL are the only of the four major sports in which every regular season game has a huge amount of value. Then again, the Giants were only 9-7 and won the Super Bowl.
You could do what baseball did and only have four teams in the playoffs. But then the regular season is meaningless for about half of the league anyways. It's a double edged sword. NHL playoffs are my favorite amongst the four professional sports. But that is because there is so much parity in the league.
um...disagree with you there.
if a 5-8 seed made it to the finals 8 times since 2000 that mean a 1-4 seeded team has made it the other 16 times. I think that makes it significant.
Just because a lower seeded team wins a tournament doesn't make the regular season meaningless.
This is why I want my playoff system instituted. You can't have a 16-team playoff as awesome as the NHL's without diluting the regular season, but you can structure that playoff so as to give the highest seeds the greatest possible benefits.
I'd honestly get rid of a round and make it 8 teams but I don't think that will ever fly.
- Dixie: STL, NAS, TB, CAR, FLA, WAS
- Norris: OTT, TOR, PIT, DET, CMB, BUF
- Patrick-Adams: NJ, NYR, NYI, MON, BOS, PHI
- Heartland: MIN, CHI, DAL, COL, WPG, PHX
- Gretzky: VAN, CAL, EDM, ANA, SJ, LA
You mean "Lidstrom Division?"
I look at it from the opposite perspective in that it means anything can happen in the playoffs. In the NBA playoffs, you can pretty much pencil in which teams are going to win each round and you would be right most of the time. Remember the year the pistons were the 8 seed and there were 8,000 people at the palace (mostly LeBron fans) for their playoff games cause everyone realized they had no chance? That doesn't happen in the NHL because 5-8 seeds have a legit chance to win.
I think this actually adds to the regular season, because with the point awarded for shootouts now, very few teams are completely out of it going into the last month. The mentality has to be get in and we'll have a shot. This year, the 6-8 seeds of the Western Conference were up for grabs until the last week of the season.
can't agree. The fact that we know (a lot of the time anyway) which team will win in NBA playoiffs early on means that the regular season was an actual determinant of the value of the teams competing in the playoffs. Hence, meaningful.
So then the playoffs are meaningless?
The playoffs are what matters, and what you accomplish in them determines the success of failure of your season. That's just a fact. So anyone that wins a title or went deep into the playoffs had a great season. And that's great. But in my minority opinion, the fact that any team that has a mediocre season is even in a playoff, at all, means that succeeding, i.e. having a sparkling regular season record, is not rewarded. And those that argue "home ice" is a nice advantage haven't paid lots of attention to NHL hockey.
I respect a lot of the contrary views here, but regardless of my choice of words in the OP, I really don't know how someone can disagree that regular season excellence is not really relevant in NHL hockey, when a 6 and 8 seed are playing for the title. What that means is that when the regular season is happening, teams in first place and playing well are much less relevant to the final outcome to the season than in other sports. Therefore, the regular seaon is less relevant as a result.
You said we already know who is going to advance in the NBA playoffs, so why not axe most of them and just go to the Finals?
So if the playoffs are what matter, what are you complaining about? Do you want a system like Euro football in which being the top team at the end of the season is the ultimate? Because that just makes the season less relevant for over half the teams that don't have a shot at having the best record. And we don't have a hockey Champions League or relegation system to ensure teams try and perform. There's a ton of parity in the NHL and the playoffs work. When you play 80 games in a season, guess what? Alot of games are going to seem irrelevant no matter what. Teams get rewarded for having a better regular season - they get home ice advantage (which does make a difference for teams no matter what you say) and you play a worse opponent. Just because upsets happened and the 8 and 6 seed met in the Finals doesn't mean the regular season is unimportant. If anything, it makes it more important because you want to secure a spot in the playoffs. They're not going to contract the playoffs ever anyways because of $. So don't bother complaining about it, just go and ignore the regular season and watch the playoffs. It's what I do with the NBA (outside of watching Pistons regular season games) and I'm fine with that.
The worst problem is that the officials call a totally different game during the playoffs than the regular season. In the case of the Wings in the years immediately preceding their first Stanley Cup, they were rewarded for finesse during the regular season and then slapped down like a JV team for it during the playoffs.
Most years, it seems like the best way to build a Stanley Cup winner is to have a great goalie who is a master of staying in position, a few scorers, and a bunch of bruisers and grinders. As long as you finish in the top 16 during the regular season, you can then start beating the crap out of teams physically in the playoffs, and depend on your scorers and goalie to take care of the rest.
The regular season becomes meaningless when the majority of your teams are in the playoffs. If it's that easy to get in, you need some other incentive, like home court/ice/field. But that's pretty meaningless in hockey (at least relative to other sports), so you've got the dual combo of too many teams, and not enough incentive between being #1 or #8. Baseball fixes it by less teams getting in. Basketball by home court meaning a lot more. Football, a bit of combo of the two, but more by being teflon, and even they probably are letting too many teams in now. If the Kings would have to win more to get in, the regular season would have meant a lot more to them.
Every sport. 16 game season.
A case can be made in almost any sport for the regular season being meaningless then, if you just look at a low seeded team winning a championship. Prime examples are the New York Giants (2011), St. Louis Cardinals (2011), and Green Bay Packers (2010), just to name a few.
Any sport where there is a playoff, you run the risk of a lower seeded team winning thereby "devaluing the regular season".
In the NHL playoffs, you need to be the best team for at least a month, if not more. Take the Kings, for example. LA won an extraordinary amount of road games and beat the top three teams, by seed, in the West. Its not like they had the benefit of playing weak teams, as the NHL reseeds after each round.
I guess if you want to argue the regular season being meaningless, we could go to only the best team in the West and the best team in the East, recordwise, facing off for the Stanley Cup. But Vancouver was eliminated on April 22nd and the Rangers on May 25th.
When a non-playoff team wins the Stanley Cup, then the regular season is meaningless.
because no one could survive a regular season playing that style of hockey.
The NHL's salary cap has done exactly what it was designed to do, level the playing field and now fans of every team that make the playoffs feel like their team has a legit shot to win the cup. This part is good, the bad part is teams are nearly indestinguishable from each other and injuries play a large role in who advances and who doesn't.
The LA Kings may have been an eigth seed but the 2nd half of the NHL season they were 25-13-11 after hiring Sutter, and nearly won their division which was one of the closest races in hockey this year. They lost out to the Coyotes who won their last 5 games. The Kings went ahead in every series 3-0, no one had ever done that, not even some of the great dynasty teams of the past.
I watched just about every game and the Kings were sensational.
We were talking about this last night. All that matters is that you get that 8th seed or higher, and then play physical as all get out in the post season.
The NHL needs to go down to 8 teams or 12 like the NFL. After a grueling 82 game schedule, if you win your division it means absolutely nothing. I know it gives you home ice, but we saw how little that meant this year.
I actually think this years Kings squad does the opposite of what the OP is arguing (though I see where he comes from). If the Kings hadn't evaluated their team halfway through the regular season and made two MAJOR changes (getting Carter and hiring Sutter) they would not have been close to making the playoffs.
I think this Stanley Cup Champion will argue their failures (and subsequent changes) makes this regular season mean more than it had in the past.
For those of us that remember the Original Six, the fourth place team often won the cup, like the last Maple Leafs, I think.
I interrupt this thread for some breaking possible zombie news: per Reuters release at 4:48 AM CDT a pair of lungs have been found on a sidewalk in Los Angeles. Now back to hockey.
that the regular season is meaningless in every sport, especially professional. Even the current college football system takes much of the meaning out of the regular season.
At least in the NHL, the product is good.
The unwatchable NBA, not so much.
I can't wait to read Bill Simmons's article on his daughter's arduously long wait for a Stanley Cup. It'll be a real tear-jerker.
Can we get her some Cubs tickets? Pregnant wife = Red Sox title x2. Daughter gets kings tickets = Cup. Uncanny.
Sadly, you'll probably get your sarcastic wish
US pro sports have way too many teams in the playoffs (with the exception of MLB). People get scared because a CFB playoff may one day get to 8 or even 16 teams (gasp!) with playoff creep and we have 16 out of ~60 DI hockey schools in the tourney and we think that's pushing it but then the NFL, NHL, and NBA have right around half of the league in the playoffs! Why have a regular season if anyone with a winning record makes it?
Let's have a CFB playoff with 64 out of 120 teams. Because darn it if that 7-5 Purdue team doesn't deserve a chance too.
Both the NBA and NHL have > 50% of their teams in the playoffs. 16/30 for each.
I agree for three of the pro sports but not the NBA.
In the case of the NBA, you need a large percentage of the league in the playoffs because games played by unmotivated teams late in the season are downright unwatchable (and I'm a basketball fan). By March, teams destined for the lottery are trying to tank, or at best, just don't care, and the quality of play drops in the toilet. OTOH, teams fighting for playoff position can have some really exciting games down the stretch. The gap between good and bad basketball is gigantic.
Note that in the 1980s, which are often called the golden age of the league, there were 16/23 teams (70%) making the playoffs. Back then almost every team was still in the playoff hunt in the final weeks. Now, I think they might want to expand the playoffs to 20 teams and give the top few teams in each conference a bye.
I could say you don't need all those teams in the playoffs because the first round is darn near unwatchable. They need to at least go back to the shortened 5 game series.
I do agree that the first round is too long - best-of-five was perfect. But in any event the quality of play is still way, way higher than it is for a game between two non-playoff-bound teams in March.