NHL needs to add a play-in round for playoff qualification

Cheering for your team to win is the most basic purpose of sports fandom.

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Every year, when fans watch the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, they get to do exactly so.

Maybe their team will pull off an upset, like the sophomore fans of the Seattle Kraken just experienced.

But for too much of the hockey season, that’s not the feeling a large number of fans feel. In many cases, hockey fans find themselves cheering against their team, hoping they lose and end the season closer to the bottom so they have a better chance at the first overall pick in the draft lottery.

Sports fans just shouldn’t be put in such a pickle.

Other sports have figured this out, finding a way for fans of teams that have no hope of winning a title to have something to cheer for.

The NBA has come up with the play-in tournament, for instance.

Soccer, forever, has had the relegation battle.

And it’s watching fans of teams fighting against the drop where we learn some important truths.

Take Patrick Harper, born-and-raised in Surrey and lifelong Everton fan, for instance.

“I used to watch a bit of hockey. Then just the playoffs. Now nothing,” he admits.

There are just too many games that don’t matter in hockey.

For the second season in a row, Everton have been at risk of being relegated out of the English Premier League. Not playing in the top division in English soccer has been a true rarity for the 145-year-old club.

With four games left, Everton have just 29 points and are 19th in the standings, a point back of a three-way tie for 16th between Leicester City, Leeds United and Nottingham Forest. Forest are 18th by tiebreaker and if the season ended today, would join Everton and last-placed Southampton in being relegated to the second-tier Championship.

There’s far less TV money on the table in the Championship, not too mention a loss of pride in being proven not worthy of the biggest soccer league in the world.

The decline of recent years has been trying but there’s always been a reason to keep watching, even if much of it feels like self-flagellation.

“I stopped watching hockey because there are too many games and no consequences for being the worst of the lot. The football structure makes almost every game matter, and that’s what keeps it exciting. Although it is emotionally draining, I’ve got to take the good with the bad, and would rather have this structure any day over how North American sports leagues are organized,” Harper said.

Everton is battling another famous old English club in Leeds United. Burnaby’s Graham Wilson grew up in Leeds and has kept up with his childhood team.

Leeds have been back in the top division for three years.

It hasn’t been easier, but Wilson says he’s happy to balance the short-term thrill ride of battling to stay up against the overarching existential dread of what being relegated would mean.

“If we do stay up it’ll be great, celebrations all-round, as good as winning the premiership, but then what happens next year, same-old, same-old,” he said. “But I do believe in promotion/relegation, it make things so much more interesting.”

Promotion/relegation will never happen in the NHL, but looking to the lessons of how another North American league has approached their season structure bears looking at if you’re in the NHL’s head office.

The NBA’s play-in tournament has created outstanding buzz in its two years of existence. It’s given fans of teams chasing the seventh through 10th spots in their conference standings a reason to stay invested through to the end of the season.

From a playing standpoint, it also incentivizes finishing in the top six, so you avoid playing an extra game or two.

And owners want to sell more tickets to games and it’s easier to sell tickets to games that matter.

The other thing the NBA has done concurrently is flattened the odds of the draft lottery, meaning that finishing last doesn’t have much of an advantage over finishing just shy of the play-in round.

NBA fans, like soccer fans, just get to cheer for wins.

And that’s what hockey fans deserve as well.

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