35 Team League Wide Wild Card Example 2
Here is another example, to further demonstrate the format and show a few more of my non-existent expansion teams.
Since 4 of the 5 Conferences will always have 5 teams in the first round, 2 crossover series will be necessary, determined by which Conference is the single 4-team group (“missing team”):
The Northeast Conference is “missing” a team, so the crossovers will be between the Pacific and Midwest, and the Central and Atlantic:
To have an idea of the fairness of these matchups, here are the teams’ overall position league-wide in grey next to their matchups. This shows some of the weaknesses of the “middle crossover” technique for crossover matchups, as the Devils by finishing 3rd in their Conference get a much easier matchup than 2nd:
Assume the faded out teams have lost their 1st Round matchups and move on to the 2nd Round:
In the second round, there will always be 2 Conferences with 3 teams, and 3 with 2 teams. The ones with 2 teams have the teams face each other:
The 2 middle teams in the 3-team Conferences play a crossover series, no matter which 2 Conferences they come from. In this example, we get a Pacific-Eastern matchup, which occasionally occurs in this format’s second round:
Looking at the teams’ league-wide positions, these matchups are very unbalanced because of the grouping in this format. Once again, crossing over the middle teams does not give a positive result (its main advantage is simplicity):
Assume the faded out teams have lost their second round matchups:
The Pacific Conference is the one with 2 teams, so the crossovers are Midwest/Central and Northeast/Atlantic:
A matchup occurs between the 2 teams remaining in 1 conference, Pacific in this case:
The remaining matchups are the Midwest/Central crossover, and the Northeast/Atlantic crossover:
Here are the league-wide positions for each 3rd round matchup. The crossovers force the #4 and #6 teams to draw teams significantly higher in the standings than #12 Calgary:
Assume each faded out team has lost their 3rd Round matchup:
Columbus earns the bye to the Stanley Cup Finals:
Calgary moves on to the Stanley Cup Finals and is the only team to play a 5th series:
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