Now that the American Hockey League has a 30 teams in the league and all of the divisions are unbalanced, there’ll now be a crossover rule in both the East and West Conferences. There will still be 16 teams total making the playoffs.
Updated: I had originally said only the Eastern Conference had the crossover rule.
The Eastern Division will have eight teams and the Atlantic will only have seven this coming season. What the cross over rule means is that the fifth place team in the East would make the playoffs if it has more points than the fourth place team in the Atlantic. That means that five teams could make the playoffs in the East and only three in the Atlantic.
The same thing applies for the West and North Divisions. If the fifth place team in the North has more points than the fourth place team in the West Division the fifth place team will make the playoffs.
Now that the league has 30 teams the ideal scenario would be for the top eight teams in each conference to make the playoff no matter what division they are in. Unfortunately this is the American Hockey League though and what would seem to make the most sense does not happen.
Thanks to Lindsay Kramer for the original post providing the information and also clarifying the rule.
Would love to see it the way NHL does it, but then people would view it unfair to their division say, if 6 east division teams get in with 2 atlantic teams. You’d go top two in each division, as seeds 1-2, then fill out the remaining 6 by points.
I don’t think that a Portland-Charlotte 1-8 1st round matchup would be very pallatable to the coffers of either team. The travel expenses would be immense!
Baby steps though. 1st 30 teams. 2nd 2-ref system. 3rd a better carrier to broadcast the games (AHL Live robs you blind for shoddy live feeds) 4th is replay on goals, 5th is scheduling each team at least once 6th is 3 divisions per conference and then once you get there you can start taking a more common sense approach to the playoffs…
I think the ideal situation would be to set things up like the NHL. Two divisions and six conferences. Portland to Charlotte is at least in the same time zone, Rochester and Abbotsford had to play in the first round this season – that travel was probably more costly. I think everyone who follows the league closely knows things won’t change.
Agree with you on everything else, except for the 2-ref system. The refs and linesmen now can’t get out of the plays quick enough, having even more inexperienced refs would create more traffic on the ice.