The PWHL has completed quite a bit regardless that it’s solely been in existence for a number of months. It has set data for attendance. It has sealed the cracks in girls’s hockey that had shaped. It has given momentum to girls’s hockey under the worldwide stage, which had been caught in impartial due to splits between teams and leagues.
And now it’s the primary league to choose a playoff system that’s completely happy to simply accept a bit of spice to it.
So the crew that finishes the common season on the prime will get to declare whom they suppose they’re extra prone to beat, which can make any sequence just a bit extra private. It’s straightforward to see the place a third- or fourth-place crew, particularly the third-place crew, carries a big chip on its shoulder by being the one chosen as the simpler path to the ultimate. Actually it is going to rile the followers of no matter crew will get chosen and maintain them extra locked in. And positively extra persons are extra prone to hunt down watching a sequence that begins with a story as a substitute of getting to develop one over the primary couple video games. It’s a grudge match earlier than a puck is dropped, which helps a league that hasn’t actually had time to develop natural rivalries but.
That’s not all of the PWHL does that will likely be music to the ears of hockey followers. One, it’s already been operating a 3-2-1-0 factors system, which implies that regulation wins are price greater than OT or shootout wins. Which is one thing that NHL followers have been screaming for in that league for some time now, as a result of wins in 60 minutes earlier than attending to gimmicks to determine a winner needs to be extra helpful.
The PWHL can be going with the reverse draft order system, that means that the No. 1 decide within the draft will likely be awarded to whichever crew collects probably the most factors after being eradicated from playoff rivalry within the common season. Now, this can work higher when there are greater than six groups, as solely two groups will miss the playoffs. Secondly, PWHL contracts aren’t actually lengthy sufficient to push gamers to present it their all for draft picks they might not play with. We don’t even know if tanking was going to be an issue on this league, which is unique sufficient in the intervening time to maintain actually good gamers out as a result of there simply isn’t sufficient area for them.
However it additionally may very well be stated that it’s good to get this in now earlier than growth, and it’s totally different, and there’s nothing incorrect with a brand new league making an attempt to face out and making an attempt one thing new.
The PWHL already has a core, a giant core, of girls’s hockey followers. However to be able to be extra profitable, i.e. carry in additional simply normal hockey followers, it’s an important ploy to present them issues that they need out of the leagues they already watch. Hockey followers aren’t all that totally different than different sports activities’ followers in that tanking isn’t one thing anybody likes. The three-point system of the NHL retains fake-parity the theme of the day far an excessive amount of. Giving the crew that’s finest within the common season one thing to take benefit by making the common season price one thing further. It’s all price a attempt at worst.
It is a grievance concerning the NWSL, which has a a lot simpler path to promotion/relegation with the USL Tremendous League coming on-line, or a single desk/no playoff system. Or perhaps a extra step-laddered playoff system to make the season extra significant, two issues MLS merely hasn’t offered soccer followers. NWSL may, however hasn’t but.
The PWHL actually can’t be accused of not being courageous and never catering to tastes of all hockey followers. Fortune favors the courageous.
Making heads or tails of newest CONCACAF silliness
Sticking within the girls’s sports activities class, probably the most CONCACAF factor occurred within the Ladies’s Gold Cup final night time, that means that no less than CONCACAF goofiness is aware of no gender. The event has expanded to 12 groups this yr, however nonetheless needs eight groups to maneuver on. With the tourney break up into three teams of 4, that meant that each one the group winners and all of the second-place groups superior. However solely two of the three third-place groups advance. Argentina completed with 4 factors, in order that they’re by means of. However Puerto Rico and Costa Rica each completed with three factors. With a -2 goal-differential. Each having scored two targets. Each having given up 4 targets. There was no approach to break up them aside from a coin flip:
Costa Rica gained the toss. There’s a life lesson in there someplace.
