Yesterday, Nov. 17th, 2020, the fellas over at TSN (Hayes, Noodles, and O-Dog) on their Overdrive show were talking about how detrimental having all seven Canadian teams in one division might be and I’d like to present that to you. So I’ve transcribed the video, which will be included in this post, and if it performs well, I may make “BLH Transcribed” a more regular thing. You can let me know if that’s something you’re interested in by contacting me on the socials or leaving a comment below!
For your reference:
JM: Jamie McLennan (Noodles)
BH: Bryan Hayes
JO: Jeff O’Neill (O-Dog)
Where Do You stand on an All-Canadian Division?
JM: Obviously you’re hearing these stories about, well, if there’s going to be a Canadian division. I don’t know, I’m sure you guys talked about it last week. I’ve been off for two weeks but I don’t know where I stand having a Canadian division. I don’t think it’s good for the actual teams that are really good, which are six, there’s six Canadian teams that are really good!
BH: Right.
JM: Like, you’re gonna have if they~
BH: …scattered over three different divisions.
JM: Right. That’s what I’m saying. Like, if you have, for example, a western American division, which they’re probably going to have, you’re going to have LA, Anaheim and San Jose and Arizona playing against each other a bunch of times. All four of those teams aren’t projected to be playoff teams.
BH: No, they were terrible last year,
JM: Right.
JO: Vegas will dummy all the way
JM: Vegas and Colorado will absolutely rinse them. So it may be Dallas is in there depending on how things are are are laid out. If Dallas maybe is in the Central depending on you know, how the league looks at it. But I’m just thinking, you know, McDavid playing Matthews eight times and then you know Winnipeg playing Toronto, like, there’s gonna be points left on the table. So one of those California teams or Arizona is going to have technically as many points as one of these teams in Canada, who are much superior on paper to them.
BH: It’s going to be like the NFC East basically. Like if they do it like they generally do, they just realign but they stick with top three get in plus wild card, which they might change to just simply top four from each division maybe get rid of the wild cards because of the disparity in terms of scheduling and the lack of travel and all that kind of stuff. If you do that and you simply go top four, two teams are gonna miss that would have felt like they’d have a shot in the traditional format of top three and two wild cards in your usual divisions with crossover and schedules and 82 games and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, you’re right, two teams are going to get burned. But I think it’s a little bit short-sighted because I think if they stick with that also and they continue with you play the first two rounds within your division, you’re gonna have two Canadian matchups and then a third before you even get into the conference finals, which I think would be remarkable tv and remarkable content.
I’m with you in terms of the balance and the competitive balance. It quite honestly might be the toughest division in the league, you know, and it will be an absolute grind and a couple of teams are going to miss out and who knows which two teams that might be you know, maybe it’s Toronto and Edmonton that miss and you’re like~
JO: How are they going to figure that out? There’s a Canada division? How many teams come out of there?
BH: Well,l that’s where they got to work on that right now
JM: It could be four of seven O(Dog). So we’re just throwing out the seventh because Ottawa’s in a rebuild.
BH: Ottawa is not making it interesting.
JM: We’re suggesting that Ottawa’s not in there. So, we’re looking at four of the six that we believe because we’ve had this debate on the show before. You could make a case for all six of these Canadian teams to be playoff-bound or be the best team in Canada based on x y or z. Whether it’s goaltending or depth or defenseman, like, you know, Calgary made a splash, and Vancouver, are they going to take a step back without Markstrom and Tanev? But then you add in Nate Schmidt yet and Braden Holtby, like, maybe they continue to take off. Edmonton, you know, Draisaitl and McDavid give them a chance every night.
BH: Well, I think the three Western teams are the ones that get jobbed the most because I think they would be the three favorites to finish top three in the division. The California teams aren’t any good and Arizona’s taking a massive step back and I guess vegas would be in there with them, I guess, to wrap that up.
But yeah, maybe vegas would be the favorite, but two of the other three are finishing second and third you would presume and because they probably beat up on the other four teams you’d have a really good shot at a wild card and that’s just not going to be the case if it’s an All-Canadian division exclusively.
And let’s say only four of seven get in, but that sure seems like where it’s going. I mean, there’s way too much smoke out. I mean, they’re saying it on the record now. Like Gary Bettman’s talking about it, owners are talking about it, it’s going to happen. It’s going to be a Canadian Division, it’s just a matter of whether or not they cross over by the end of the year and whether or not it’s top three and two wild cards in the east and in the west.
But I don’t know how you do in East and West when the Canadian Division is made up of East and West. Yeah, so how do you determine wild cards, you know? Unless you put them with another division and you mix it up based on that.
But these are all things that have to be worked out and it doesn’t seem like they’re that close to making an announcement. I mean, maybe we get caught off guard and before you know it two or three days down the road. boom! it’s been done, it’s been established, here’s where we’re playing, here’s how we’re playing, here’s what the schedule looks like. But the reports would not indicate it’s that close. We’re almost into December, so it better be sooner than later if they’re going to play come January 1 or the middle of January.
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