Well, the way I read into the post from BB-Charles, this change is designed to take money away from the teams that play for the championship and also teams that play a relegation series. Nothing else. Why do I say that:
1) He said it was not to fix the 5th place issue.
2) They could have simply removed salaries for all teams during the off-season and adjusted the TV revenue accordingly (which they did not do).
3) If you look at the net change, the biggest losers are the winners of each conference. After that, it is the teams in the relegation series (maybe someone can do the math and figure out the exact dollars and cents in play here).
If I look in my crystal ball all I see this doing is inviting more people to tank.
Also, this solution seems pretty convoluted. Why not remove salaries for everyone during the off-season and not tie playoff wins to attendance? Make winning a playoff series a fixed prize. To me that seems less confusing than what is coming down the pipe.
Run of the Mill Canadian Manager