Last week, because Phoenix Coyotes coach Wayne Gretzky had no postseason business to handle, he attended the Suns-Spurs playoff game and got to see Steve Nash play on, although the Canadian-born point guard looked as if he had been checked nose-first into the boards.
One of the points Gretzky could have raised was that if the NBA had the same playoff system as the NHL, Phoenix wouldn’t be facing San Antonio in the second round.
The NHL re-seeds after every round; the NBA does not, instead going with a straight bracket.
That means the NHL doesn’t have ridiculously imbalanced second-round conference pairings, as the NBA has now in the Western Conference with the ongoing Suns vs. Spurs and Jazz vs. Warriors.
Also last week, NBA commissioner David Stern felt the need to explain that broadcasting obligations made re-seeding impractical because it would force the NBA to wait until everyone is done in one round before beginning the next, and that would leave some holes on the planned television schedule.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this – and for those of you who don’t know, I covered the NBA for many years – but I inferred that Stern was admitting it wasn’t out of line to raise eyebrows at the imbalance, but that they were unavoidable.
Holes? The NBA ends up with three days between games in some series, and it’s worried about holes?
The relentlessness of hockey’s system is one of its attractions. With few exceptions, until the Finals, games in a series are every other day. Yes, it can lead to holding patterns BETWEEN series, but that’s far preferable to idle periods during a series.
I used to think the NHL would be better off to start with a bracket and stick with it for logistics and planning reasons, but I’ve come around: Hockey does it right, even if one of the reasons it can do it is because of the relative lack of broadcast revenue.
While the NHL’s re-seeding works, hockey should follow the NBA’s lead and go to a 2-3-2 format in the Finals.
That’s becoming more and more practical for hockey every year. From a selfish point of view, part of it has to do with the grim reality that a 2-2-1-1-1 format in the Finals lessens the likelihood that mainstream news media outlets, both print and electronic, will cover hockey’s championship series from beginning to end. Maybe that shouldn’t matter. But it still does.
Plus, in the two decades-plus the NBA has used the system, it has made the middle three games more fun, essentially leading to a carnival atmosphere as the Finals set up camp. The extra game in the second city makes a stunning difference in that feeling.
Hockey could use that, regardless of the cities involved.
The 2-2-1-1-1 format, in tandem with almost-always-only- one-day-between-games in the earlier rounds, adds to the physical and mental test. It has become overkill in the Finals.
I’d even be for beginning the 2-3-2 format one round earlier, as long as the NHL took the revolutionary step of cross-seeding the Final Four – meaning both Cup semifinal series are East vs. West, and if the Cup Finals end up with two teams from the same conference, that’s great. I know the argument against is that a split in the first two games puts the original road team in position to close out the series with three straight wins at home, but so what? If you can’t win one of three on the road, whose fault is that? And win one, the pendulum swings back, with the team having the home advantage in the series getting the final two in the home arena.
Whether Rangers vs. Devils in ’94 or Avalanche vs. Red Wings in ’96 or Maple Leafs vs. Canadiens in ’08 (a theoretical example, of course), it would be a shot in the arm for the league and lessen the chances for relatively anticlimactic Finals.
Although the West was stronger again this season, this final four isn’t decisively imbalanced. So this isn’t one of the showcase seasons for the cross-seeding argument. But that’s one of the points in support of it: We still could have a conventional East-West matchup in the Finals under that system, anyway.
Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
