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It's playoff time! This is a fun and exciting time for some teams, but for others, it's a time where they do not have any competitive game for 3 weeks. I repeat 3 weeks! Clearly, this is not fun, and this is why I have a suggestion which secures that every team actually plays meaningful games in the post-season.
As of right now, the league can be broken down into 5 groups of teams (I have only counted meaningful and competitive games here - not scrimmages that only provide training minutes):
A) The 2 teams making the final. They play 4 or 5 games.
B) The 2 teams who are eliminated in the semifinals. They play 2 games.
C) The 4 teams who are eliminated in the quarterfinals. They play only 1 game.
D) The teams ranked 5-7 in the regular season, and who plays in the relegation games. They play 2 or 3 games.
E) The two teams 8th in the regular season. They do not even get to play a single game

Now let us move on to my suggestion:
Nothing should be changed for the two teams in the final (group A).
Group B: I suggest adding a bronze game between the 2 teams in this group.
Group C: Once these 4 teams are out of the playoffs I suggest adding a group stage for them. They should play each other once, and the rankings in the group should determine league rankings 5-8
The next part is a bit more tricky, but in order to keep the concept of 5 teams relegating, I have broken group D and E down and made 2 new groups:
New group D: This group should consist of the teams ranked 5th and 8th in the regular season. Similar to group C they should play in a group stage, with each team facing the others once. Once done, the top 2 teams get to stay in the league while the other two is relegated.
New group E: This group should consist of the teams ranked 6th and 7th in the regular season. They play in a group stage like the others, but in this group only the winner stays while the others are relegated.

The upsides of this would be that everyone gets to play, which was the whole purpose of the idea. The offseason would maximum be at a week and a half, which in my opinion, would be a huge upgrade to the current state of affairs. I know that the placement games do not have any purpose really, but it would still be more fun than just playing scrimmages. Furthermore these placement games could be used to calculate season ticket holders for the next season, and then they suddenly have a purpose.

I would be happy to hear your opinion on this. Cheers!

Last edited by Underwood at 6/7/2017 11:49:18 AM

Oh i didn't realize that. But still, the 8th place already has 2 scrimmages generated. I can't imagine it would take up too much server usage to put an extra game in there, although I admit that I have no knowledge about server stuff at all

The new relegation system definitely is a step in the right direction, although I'm worried about the amount of money it brings to the economy. But for example, it should not be too hard to implement a bronze game that could replace the automatically generated scrimmage for the two eliminated semifinal teams. Such a game would definitely be exciting.

Well a way around that would simply be to continue to use regular season rankings for draft order. Instead, these games, as I initially suggested, should influence season ticket holders for the next season

I see a big flaw in the idea:
* 8th seeded teams get the opportunity to tank the entire season, buying players just before playoffs/relegation to stay in the league but still select FIRST in the draft.

There should be a great upside playing in the playoffs, rather then missing it, so every team WANTS to make the playoff, making the game more competitive. Making the 5th team now play for relegation was a step towards that.
Just sayin´

On the other hand, I´ve made the finals a few years in a row now... I feel the offseason is too short ! ;-)

I surely didn't think of this. Of course, you could work around this by implementing a separate trade deadline for players that should be used in relegation games. For example, every player acquired after the all-star break would not be usable for relegation games.
But then again, this might overcomplicate things...