Colorado Avalanche: Considering a 68-Game Rollback

If the NHL season were to resume, the Colorado Avalanche should have the best chance possible for their proper place in the standings.

The Colorado Avalanche players are at home, hopefully doing their best to stay in game shape. The hope is that the NHL can resume its 2019-20 season when some scenario of the current pandemic makes it safe.

One of the scenarios that has been floated around is to start the playoffs as soon as play can begin. Most players don’t like that idea because they’re not in peak shape right now. They can’t even train like they do in the summer because most don’t have access to an ice rink.

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What’s more, the teams aren’t in the same place in their seasons. They’ve played between 68 to 71 games. Three games means a lot in the standings. It’s the difference of positioning as well as whether some teams make a wild card spot.

For example, the New York Islanders are one of the teams who’ve only played 68 games. They’re just one point out of a playoff spot.

A couple days ago Frank Seravalli of TSN made a proposal: Roll back to the lowest common denominator, 68 games.

The idea actually stems from the Ontario Hockey League, who was struggling to find a way to rank teams for the draft. So, they rolled back to that lowest common denominator, in their case 61 games.

If the NHL adopted the rollback idea for playoff seeding — and the subsequent draft — the playoff format would look as follows:

Central Division
1 Colorado vs. WC2 Vancouver
2 St. Louis vs. 3 Dallas

Pacific Division
1 Vegas vs. WC1 Nashville
2 Edmonton vs. 3 Calgary

Metropolitan Division
1 Philadelphia vs. WC1 Carolina
2 Washington vs. 3 Pittsburgh

Atlantic Division
1 Boston vs. WC2 Islanders
2 Tampa vs. 3 Toronto

Well, lookie there — the Colorado Avalanche would host the Vancouver Canucks. We’d get down to who the rookie of the year is for sure.

The other popular idea that’s been floated out is points percentage, which would involve dividing a team’s actual points by the maximum possible points. If the NHL adopted that idea, the bracket would look like this:

Central Division
1 St. Louis vs. WC2 Calgary
2 Colorado vs. 3 Dallas

Pacific Division
1 Vegas vs. WC2 Nashville
2 Edmonton vs. 3 Vancouver

Metropolitan Division
1 Washington vs. WC1 Carolina
2 Philadelphia vs. 3 Pittsburgh

Atlantic Division
1 Boston vs. WC2 Islanders
2 Tampa vs. 3 Toronto

Interestingly, the same 16 teams make the playoffs, but the matchups are different. The Colorado Avalanche are back to playing the Dallas Stars, which is what would happen if the NHL just used the current standings. I definitely think a matchup against the Canucks would be more fun.

I also agree with Seravelli that the 68-game rollback would be more fair. Points percentage still takes into account games some teams played that others didn’t. In hockey, teams go on streaks all the time — even two games can yield a different result.

What would be the best-case scenario to my mind is for the NHL to get all teams to, say, 75 games. They’d have to work hard on the schedule — they couldn’t just pick up the season where it left off. That would give all teams a handful of games to get back in game shape and sort out the standings. If logistics were a problem, you could omit the teams who have no chance at making the playoffs.

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The finishing of the 2019-20 season may be a pipe dream. But as I lamented in a previous post, the Colorado Avalanche have a legitimate chance to challenge for the Stanley Cup. So, until the season’s been officially canceled, I’m going to keep up hope.

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