NHL could learn from new women’s hockey league playoff format

The PWHL has completed quite a bit although it’s solely been in existence for a couple of months. It has set data for attendance. It has sealed the cracks in girls’s hockey that had shaped. It has given momentum to girls’s hockey under the worldwide stage, which had been caught in impartial because of splits between teams and leagues.

And now it’s the primary league to select a playoff system that’s comfortable to simply accept a little bit spice to it.

So the workforce that finishes the common season on the prime will get to declare whom they suppose they’re extra prone to beat, which is able to make any sequence just a bit extra private. It’s straightforward to see the place a third- or fourth-place workforce, particularly the third-place workforce, carries a big chip on its shoulder by being the one chosen as the simpler path to the ultimate. Actually it’s going to rile the followers of no matter workforce will get chosen and maintain them extra locked in. And definitely extra individuals are extra prone to hunt down watching a sequence that begins with a story as an alternative of getting to develop one over the primary couple video games. It’s a grudge match earlier than a puck is dropped, which helps a league that hasn’t actually had time to develop natural rivalries but.

That’s not all of the PWHL does that might be music to the ears of hockey followers. One, it’s already been working a 3-2-1-0 factors system, which signifies that regulation wins are value greater than OT or shootout wins. Which is one thing that NHL followers have been screaming for in that league for some time now, as a result of wins in 60 minutes earlier than attending to gimmicks to determine a winner must be extra priceless.

The PWHL can be going with the reverse draft order system, which means that the No. 1 decide within the draft might be awarded to whichever workforce collects probably the most factors after being eradicated from playoff competition within the common season. Now, this may work higher when there are greater than six groups, as solely two groups will miss the playoffs. Secondly, PWHL contracts aren’t actually lengthy sufficient to push gamers to present it their all for draft picks they could not play with. We don’t even know if tanking was going to be an issue on this league, which is unique sufficient in the meanwhile to maintain actually good gamers out as a result of there simply isn’t sufficient house for them.

However it additionally could possibly be mentioned that it’s good to get this in now earlier than enlargement, and it’s completely different, and there’s nothing fallacious with a brand new league attempting to face out and attempting one thing new.

The PWHL already has a core, a giant core, of ladies’s hockey followers. However to be able to be extra profitable, i.e. deliver in additional simply common hockey followers, it’s a terrific ploy to present them issues that they need out of the leagues they already watch. Hockey followers aren’t all that completely different than different sports activities’ followers in that tanking isn’t one thing anybody likes. The three-point system of the NHL retains fake-parity the theme of the day far an excessive amount of. Giving the workforce that’s finest within the common season one thing to take benefit by making the common season value one thing additional. It’s all value a strive at worst.

It is a criticism in regards to the NWSL, which has a a lot simpler path to promotion/relegation with the USL Tremendous League coming on-line, or a single desk/no playoff system. Or perhaps a extra step-laddered playoff system to make the season extra significant, two issues MLS merely hasn’t supplied soccer followers. NWSL might, however hasn’t but.

The PWHL actually can’t be accused of not being courageous and never catering to tastes of all hockey followers. Fortune favors the courageous.

Making heads or tails of newest CONCACAF silliness

Sticking within the girls’s sports activities class, probably the most CONCACAF factor occurred within the Girls’s Gold Cup final evening, which means that no less than CONCACAF goofiness is aware of no gender. The match has expanded to 12 groups this yr, however nonetheless desires eight groups to maneuver on. With the tourney cut up into three teams of 4, that meant that every one the group winners and all of the second-place groups superior. However solely two of the three third-place groups advance. Argentina completed with 4 factors, in order that they’re by way of. However Puerto Rico and Costa Rica each completed with three factors. With a -2 goal-differential. Each having scored two objectives. Each having given up 4 objectives. There was no method to cut up them apart from a coin flip:

Costa Rica gained the toss. There’s a life lesson in there someplace.