Guerin said on First Up with Aaron Korolnek and Carlo Colaiacovo Thursday.<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cIt goes year-to-year. I think this year is just really unique in that you have these three really strong teams all in one division. You don\u2019t see that a ton.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like most sports leagues, talent imbalances shifting from one conference to another is going to happen, but by segmenting the teams a second time through the divisions, the risk of talent imbalances creating unfair seeding increases further. <\/p>\n
The pushback argument? To be the best, you\u2019re going to have to beat the best anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to be careful what you wish for, too,\u201d said Guerin.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a scenario that doesn\u2019t really matter because you are going to play a good team no matter what. The parity in the league is so strong that you\u2019re going to play somebody good.\u201d<\/p>\n
The current format also opens the door for lesser teams to be rewarded, like the Pacific-leading Anaheim Ducks, who would have home-ice advantage until the conference final, while also playing lesser competition along the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the other side of it, the teams that work so hard to get to the top, maybe deserve to at least play one of the teams that haven\u2019t gotten there,\u201d said Guerin. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo I see both sides of it, to be quite honest with you. That\u2019s really the crappy part of it, somebody\u2019s going home. I guess competitively, if you look at it, you\u2019re gonna play a good team anyway. But I do agree that one of the top three teams should not be going home.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NHL\u2019s current playoff format, which has been implemented since the 2013-14 season, has been questioned by fans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,33170,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-499584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-minnesota-wild-sports-hockey-team-team-nhl-api-30","10":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116216679892013317","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}