I like this idea. This could really play.

These are the kinds of questions the Southern Professional Hockey League hopes its fans and teams will ponder under a new playoff format, one that's designed to create such controversy and consternation.

"It's kind of like, for lack of a better term, picking a fight with a guy," said Jim Combs, president of the SPHL, a 10-team minor pro league in the southern U.S. that was founded in 2004.

The new playoff format, borrowed from Austria's Erste Bank Eishockey Liga, allows the top three teams in the eight-team playoff field to select their first-round opponents from the Nos. 5-8 seeds. The top seed gets first choice, then the second seed and then the third. The No. 4 seed gets the team that is left over. All matchups are three-game series, and the winners are reseeded in the second round based on regular-season record.

No random draw. No lottery balls. No wild cards. Just one team pointing at another team and saying, "We can totally beat you," while creating a groundswell of debate over that choice.

http://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/2105 ... ffs-format

That is awesome.....at that level. If they did that in the NHL you would have tv networks shitting their pants and trying to influence who teams pick. If they left them alone to pick as they see fit I think it would work and be great.

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That's my purse! I don't know you!

terrible idea that will only serve to give artificial motivation for the lower seeded teams (They picked us as an opponent, therefore they have on respect for us, let's go kick their asses!)

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Teams making up their own playoff bracket on the fly. Even for the glorified beer league that is the SPHL, that's amateur.

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