I've been thinking about this a lot lately and wanted to share a potential new format that the league could use.

Stage 1: Regular Season
From October to the end of February, the league should have a 62-game schedule where each team faces each other two times. This would be the most fair way to create a standing of 32 teams ranked from best to worst.

At the end of this 62 game "season" they can award the Presidents, Rocket, Jennings and any other trophy that is determined based solely on statistics. So non of the voting trophies just the stats based ones.

Break
After these 62 games (so last week of February/first week of March) the league should take a 1 week break. During this break they should have the all-star game, an awards ceremony for all the stats based trophies and the trade deadline. So all of this happens in one week, something like:

Friday: Skills Competitions
Saturday: All Star Game
Sunday: Awards
Monday Off
Tuesday Off
Wednesday Off
Thursday: Trade Deadline
Friday Off

Stage 2: Push for the playoffs
After that week off the last 20 games of the "season" are only played against division rivals. So you keep the standings as they are but you no longer play games against any teams outside your division. So you have 3 games against 6 divisional rivals and 2 games against 1 divisional rival.

This would give the league a chance to rebrand this with something like "Push for the Playoffs" or something like this to compete with March Madness and other events that cause a dip in viewership in March. It would also mean every team has 20 games each season post-deadline with their new acquisitions.

Since there is such a heavy emphasis on divisional play now. The Playoffs would also change with each division's top 4 teams making the playoffs in a simple 1v4 and 2v3 format.

Playoffs
So the first two rounds of the playoffs determine the winner of each division and they can create trophies for each division winner. When you get to the final 4 instead of having conferences, they can take the standings from the end of Stage 1 (so when everyone had played the exact same opposition in the exact same number of games) and re-seed 1v4 and 2v3. In the finals you can also pick home ice advantage based on the standings at the end of Stage 1.

Comments

Benefits:
1. I like the idea of having "equal" standings from everyone playing each other twice to determine seeding for the semi finals and finals of the playoffs.
2. The league has a weird emphasis on conferences given that there are very few cross conference rivalries. In short being in the East or West is really important but doesn't really impact much other than the wildcards and the third round of the playoffs. It makes more sense to either go to 2 conferences of 16 teams and use the 1-8 system is conferences matter or dump the conferences and stick to divisions. The fact we have both seems like a failure to let go of the past.
3. The last 20 games being against divisional rivals only helps with travel which every team should be happy about. It also makes those games much more important.
4. Having that week off means that the impact of the schedule from October to Feb/March is less important. Everyone will have played the same amount of games by then and then get a week off. You don't have teams with crammed/empty schedules towards the end of the season.
5. A fixed time for the deadline seems way overdue. Having it on a Thursday also removes a lot of the problems with Visas where players getting traded late on Friday cross border have to wait till Monday to file for a visa and often don't get with their new teams for a week.
6. Having stat based trophies awarded at that break when the schedule has been "equal" seems more fair and adds something of importance to the all-star ceremonies. It also means that there is less "awards talk" towards the end of the regular season and more focus on the playoffs. It would also make the Presidents feel more important if a team actually is awarded it and gets to celebrate it and stuff during this ceremony.

Let me know your thoughts... I feel this is a relatively minor change (more of a marketing tactic) that can drastically increase viewership, interest and fairness across the league.

So, Are all 62 games against non divisional rival teams? And what about the wild card? Wouldn't it be better to have top 4 teams in each division or just 1-8 in each conference?

Also, the awards should be pushed back to after the 82 games... For example, if Johnny Hockey starts the first 62 games with 38 goals and ends it with 70... He derives an award over Matthews Tkachuk who started the season with 45 goals and ended it with 50 (These 2 players are completely random but the example stands)

62 games includes 2 against each divisional rival. It's 2 games against the other 31 teams in the league.

Playoffs are based on the full 82 games and are 1-4 in the division. So in the 82 games you'd face your division rivals 34 times in total (14 times in the first 62 games then 20 times in the last 20 games).

I get your point on the awards but think of it from this perspective. After 62 games each you've played each team 2 times so (aside from injuries) every player/team has had the exact same quality of competition. I think its more fair to determine the best "regular season" team or goalscorer or pointscorer at that point than it is after 82 games when (if they used this format his season) McDavid would have played 10 games against the Ducks+Sharks, 36 games against teams with under 80 points (as of standings right now) and 19 games against teams with 100 points. While MacKinnon would have played 28 games aginst teams with under 80 points and 24 games aginst teams with 100 points.

With so much divisional play in those last 20 games you also have a chance for players like McDavid to just light up the bad teams in their division which guys like Matthews can't do.

Aren't there 32 teams... 32x2=64

But also, for a guy like Matthews who's case is about 70 goals... Wouldn't it be better for voters to see that happen...

And why so much divisional play? Like you said, the Pacific's so much worse than the Atlantic, so how is that fair? The ATL team will just beat up on each other

Yes but you don't play yourself

Fair point...

I said statistical awards at the end of 62 games, voting awards at the end of 82 games.

In terms of divisional play. My point is that either they should go all in on divisions and ditch the conferences and then have the top 4 teams from each division in the playoffs OR if you don't like that then I think they should ditch the Divisions and go all in on Conferences.

Think about how much more unfair it is right now that Detroit and Pittsburgh are fighting for a playoff spot when Detroit has had to play Toronto, Boston, Florida, Tampa and extra time and Pittsburgh got extra games against Columbus. Like there are 4 "top" teams in the Atlantic and 2 "top" teams in the Metro. So Detroit gets a minimum of 2 harder games (4 points) which right now is the difference between them making the playoffs or not.

It seems much more fair just to have everyone competing for playoff spots play the same schedule. If your division is too hard then that sucks for you, work on becoming a top 4 team in your division. That seems more fair than the current system where if your division is hard you get screwed in the wildcard race against teams from another division with easier schedules.

Got it...

I think they should just ditch the Divisions and go conferences... That way Detroit and Pitts are on an even field... I think conferences could solve that issue...

Another issue is; look at how well the Canadian division was received in '21... Too much playing each other could be a bad thing if there's no variety...

Yea completely get that.

This wouldn't be quite as bad. You'd play each other 5 times not 9 (I think it was) but I get the point that too much of the same isn't good either.