Playoffs are a Joke

The Philadelphia Flyers pulled out an amazing comeback against the Boston Bruins in the NHL playoffs, becoming only the third team to rally from a three games to none deficit to win a hockey playoff series. Do you know what that means?

It is yet another demonstration that playoffs are a joke. They are intended as nothing more than money grabs by the powers that be in the sports world.

We now are faced with the unreasonable spectacle of the seventh and eighth seeded teams, in the Eastern Conference of the NHL alone, playing for a shot at the Stanley Cup. That once supreme symbol of team dominance in sport is tarnished by this sort of competitive tragedy.

Not only are the Montreal Canadiens and the aforementioned Flyers the weakest teams in their conference, neither would have even made the playoffs had they played in the West. There were three Western Conference squads with better records, and one with an equal record. How fair can anyone claim playoffs to be when at least three better teams didn't even have a chance to show their stuff?

This is not to take anything away from Montreal, who ended the seasons of the first and third best teams in their conference, or Philadelphia per se. They won their games legitimately enough. But they never should have been there to participate. There were better squads on the outside looking in.

True, in the the West the number one and two seeds are playing. Yet that has happened for only the sixth time in the NHL since 1994. In short, generally speaking, after a grueling regular season the higher ranked teams regularly do not get the opportunity to play for a Cup. An opportunity that their dominance in the regular season should have earned them.

At the highest levels of play in any sport, any team can win a short series. When lesser teams even at that strata do, however, it lessens the importance of the long run. It moves competition from overall mettle into a leap at short term gains. That does not improve the aura of a championship. It diminishes it.

What the NHL has is a Stanley Cup Tournament, not an NHL Championship. They should at least have the decency to call it that. It would be better to simply seed all 32 teams and let each one have a crack at the Cup than to waste all the time they do on a meaningless regular season.