Lazarus and Cohen offer their take on new playoff format

During their latest episode of Morning Cuppa Hockey, Hosts Jonny Lazarus and former NHLer Colby Cohen Give their ideas on how to improve the value of the regular season by changing the current format back with some incentives.

For decades, the NHL had the one versus eight playoff format that would reward teams at the top to get home ice advantage and play the weaker teams to help them with their Stanley Cup chances.

But with the current format which is a wild card style like baseball with the number 2 and #3 seed playing against one another, it causes many great teams that have had excellent seasons to go out in the first round rather than playing teams that are weaker.

The idea of the winner of their division being able to choose their opponent in the first round is quite interesting.

Cohen is right in terms of how much hatred would be put towards that other team as they essentially deem them inferior to them.

There's a need to change the playoff format as the conversations continue to intensify and even during the general managers meetings these kinds of chats were being done but nothing was moved on. It's safe to say that there's plenty of rivalries already in the NHL and that if they went back to the one versus 8 format teams would be more rewarded for the regular season and could still build their matchups.