The Sabres took down the Capitals 6-2 in Jeff Skinner’s 1,000th game, but we’ve got something else to discuss.
BUFFALO — In what’s become yet another shining example of how silly/feeble/fantastic/horrible/great the race for the Eastern Conference wild card has become, the Buffalo Sabres took down the Washington Capitals 6-2 in a game that saw the Sabres’ big guns all come out firing.
JJ Peterka scored twice and had an assist while Rasmus Dahlin, Tage Thompson, and Alex Tuch each had a goal and two assists. The top line and the top defensemen all coming together to pile on goals in the third period to help pull away in a game that could’ve gotten away from them. They even scored two power play goals: one from Peterka on a slick play from Zach Benson and Tuch; the second on an abbreviated power play where Dahlin unleashed a blast from the blue line past Caps goalie Charlie Lindgren.
“We’ve had a lot of talks and it finally trickled in,” Dahlin said. “We’ve been having a lot of chances the last, whatever, five games on the power play, but we haven’t scored. That can create frustration, but we just stayed with it and scored two really good goals today, and we just got to continue to build.”
It was Jeff Skinner’s 1,000th game and coming away with a win during that really meant a lot to the players.
It was a great performance against a team ahead of them in the wild card race that Buffalo is still, mathematically, a part of.
They’re part of it, of course, because they beat Washington but also because everyone else involved in the race is trading off shooting themselves in the foot when it’s time for them to potentially pull away. For instance, the Capitals are now 0-2-1 in their past three games after they’d ascended their way into the second wild card. Whoops.
What this kind of three-legged sack race has done between Detroit, Washington, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York Islanders, Buffalo, and New Jersey, for some, has highlighted how mediocre all of these teams are.
TRUE!
But in mediocrity comes competition. It may not be the elite kind of competition we’re seeing at the top of the standings between the Rangers and Carolina or Florida and Boston, but it’s competition nonetheless and that kind of thing is something we like to see.
That’s why we’re in favor of adopting the NBA playoff model in which they have a play-in round for the final two spots of the postseason. Let’s hash it out.
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The NBA playoffs are wild now after they’ve added the play-in round. There, the top six teams in each conference make the postseason while teams 7-10 go into the play-in to see which two teams come out for the final two spots.
Now the one quibble here is how the NBA does it. There, the No. 7 team plays the No. 8 team, and the winner gets the No. 7 seed. The 9 and 10 seeds play each other, and the loser goes to the lottery. Then the loser the 7 vs. 8 game plays the winner of the 9 vs. 10 game with the winner getting the No. 8 seed and the loser going to the lottery.
That’s great and cool and gives the benefit of the doubt to the teams higher up in the standings and guarantees one of them going to the playoffs while the second spot is still up for grabs. Single elimination is tough, but when you’ve played 82 games, you don’t really need to drag it out more.
BUT…
What if you did a best-of-3 with the No. 7 team playing the No. 10 team and the No. 8 team plays No. 9. Win two games and you move on. That may be asking a lot of hockey to do that because you’d essentially be giving the top-six teams from each conference a week to rest up, but wouldn’t that make for a nice reward while everyone else in the pool is fighting to get in?
Rather than having this bumbling contest to get to the eight seed in the East, why not turn it into a fun war for everyone in the pool to get into ninth and tenth?
Right now, you’d have Tampa Bay against the Islanders with Washington facing Detroit for this fight. But by setting the bar at 10th, suddenly Pittsburgh is right there with the Sabres four back and the Devils five out. Keep in mind that Philadelphia is in third in the Metropolitan with 83 points, so they’ve got the Capitals and Islanders right on their heels, too.
The playoffs are supposed to be exciting. They’re also supposed to be fun. And since the NHL doesn’t want to “ruin the records” by adopting a 3-2-1 system for standings points, allowing teams to cram overtime points to fluff their point totals helps fog up the view as to who is playoff worthy or not.
If you’re going to allow abject goofiness where some games are worth two standings points and others are worth three, then why not go all the way and have those at the cutoff line for the postseason duke it out to see who should actually be part of the fun?
While I have a skewed view and like my own idea for how to do a play-in round, even adopting the NBA’s way of doing it creates a boatload of intrigue. Imagine being the losing team between Tampa Bay-Washington having to put your playoff spot on the line against the team with momentum on their side that won the Detroit-New York Islanders game? Losing and not clinching a spot in the playoffs and then having to play again right away riding a low while your opponent is riding a high? Drama! Intrigue! Psychological mayhem!
This argument isn’t being made because it would help scooch the Sabres a little bit closer to a playoff conversation, it’s being made because it would make for sky-high entertainment value and add some home date(s) for the highest seeded teams fighting to get in.
I understand, everyone wants the highest quality for the postseason and to see the best of the best battle it out. But this kind of fight is to see who might get their teeth kicked in by the best teams in the conference in the first round… Or become the next great Cinderella story. Isn’t that what we want in sports? Pooh-poohing fun ideas because these teams are lower in the standings is an oddball brand of snobbery.
“Too many teams already make the playoffs!”
I guess, sure? We’re still talking about 16 of 32 teams making the postseason, it’s just a question of who the final two in each conference will be with the play-in round. That’s it! We’re not making this an everyone-into-the-pool kind of thing. Besides, if you don’t win in the play-in, you don’t make the playoffs. It’s that simple. Didn’t we learn anything from the Bubble?
“It waters down the competition!”
As if the cornball point system hasn’t done that already. Please.
That you have a pile of teams in the East playoff race with double figures in OT points is stupid and while they’ve got tiebreakers in place for regulation wins and regulation or OT wins, why are we creating more layers like that as opposed to just doing a proper point system instead? If you want to reward teams for winning in regulation, give them three points. Allowing teams to just swallow up points for getting to overtime allows mediocrity to fester in the first place. At least in a 3-2-1 system, going to overtime means both teams missed a big opportunity to cash in and either catch up or distance themselves from the chasers.
“This idea is stupid and you’re stupid for liking it!”
Yeah, well, like… that’s your opinion, man.
Listen, I get it, change is scary and no one wants to get radical with doing things. But so long as we have a dumb point system and the NHL insists on doing this weird divisional playoff format as opposed to straight up 1-8 seeding, this is what we’ve got. Besides, even if they did go back to 1-8 seeding, you could still do the play-in just as easily because it would literally be the same thing.
Everyone wants meaningful games late in the season and doing this is a fun and competitive way to make that happen. More teams fighting it out to get into the play-in and then the play-in round itself to settle the playoff field. Do it now, do it before more expansion happens (because it will) and get modern for the love of all things Gordie.