On Wed, 1 Oct 1997, William F. Sangrey wrote:
 
>   Rather than eliminating the bottom two teams in the regular season, just
> have 6 first round series, with the winners advancing to Lake Placid.  Then
> have a 6 vs. 3 and 5 vs. 4 games played on Friday night.  Saturday has the
> winners vs numbers 1 and 2, with the finals (and consolation if desired) on
> Sunday.  This gives the fan 5 or 6 games, and avoids the problem of the
> single game the first day of the event.  In addition, this would put a
> primium on finishing 1 or 2 in the regular season (a just reward for a good
> season), yet not severly seperate the 3rd from the 4th and 5th place teams as
> a final five does.
 
It doesn't really solve the problem, though. It just moves it up a bit.
Instead of severely separating 3 from 4, one separates 2 from 3. Why
should a team be penalized for finishing third?
 
I really don't see what was wrong with the old system.
 
As far as I'm concerned, a good playoff system should go down to powers
of 2 (4, 8, 16, whatever) after the first round. Anything else penalizes
the wrong teams. I'll expand on this in a separate post later tonight.
 
See you later,
John
 
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