Quote:
Originally Posted by Honolulu_Blue
The biggest (and perhaps only) drawback to this system is that you're very likely to have teams that should be in the playoffs excluded and weaker teams included. I'd still be in favor of it.
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That would be a factor, but I don't think it would be a severe one - maybe the occasional #5 team better than the #3 in a another division. If you have an unbalanced schedule and focus on divisional games, such comparisons between divisions would be flawed anyway. And actually, the smaller the divisions, the greater the chance for such statistical anomalies (see the NFL). In the current NHL system it's pretty easy to have a division winner that's only the 6th or 7th best team in the conference.
It's funny, sometimes we (or really, the leagues) want a huge amount of small divisions, and sometimes we sound like we only want one big division. Some people complained about the Patriots, for example, not making the NFL playoffs over teams with worse records. The solution to that (if it's a problem) would be to have 1 division w/32 teams, and the top 12 making the playoffs.