Playoff Goals

With NHL playoffs starting three days before the NBA's annual post-season tournament, spring time is playoff time for hockey and basketball. It's easy to compare these two sports this time of year; each has 16 qualifying participants, advancement is determined by a seven game series, and both culminate in an East versus West finale carrying us into early summer. Part of what makes these playoff formats so enjoyable is the constant slew of games right from the start. This helps give fans a familiarity with the players and how they perform under pressure at the highest level of their sport, without having to commit to the long grind of an 82-game regular season.

There are varying degrees of success for teams in the playoffs. Young squads are hoping to gain playoff experience to build on for future seasons, veteran teams will be satisfied only with a championship, and teams in the middle are hoping for an upset or two simply to extend their season. A team's playoff mindset feels tangible; the marketing department adopts it and their fanbase generally emulates that approach from series to series.

With that as an inspiration, I came into this year's playoff season with a goal as well. That goal was simple: to watch more of the NHL playoffs than the NBA. Having grown up on the Bulls dynasty run in the 90's, it's no small task to switch interest to the sport on ice. Maybe it's a carryover from the Olympics, but it feels like the time is right. Despite knowing that this approach won't gain any points at the water cooler, I'm convinced that playoff hockey now provides more rewards than its hoops counterpart. Here's a case why hockey might be a better investment for the sports public:

1) Closer games. Part of what makes the playoffs so great is that it provides matchups of the league's best teams, which should result in a bevvy of close, competitive contests. Let's assume a close NHL contest is one in which a team loses by just two goals or less. Since the start of the playoffs, 63% of the games have being decided by that margin, a number that is consistent with the 65% mark reached during last year's playoffs. What a great feeling it must be for hockey fans knowing that any given playoff game will be close more than 6 out of 10 times. Compare that to the NBA, where we can assume that a 5 point contest (plus any game going to overtime, regardless of final score) constitutes a close game. So far this year, a paltry 27% of playoff contests have fallen within that 5 point margin, a tick below the 31% mark reached in 2009. Of course, context is different in each sport, and a basket or two down the stretch can alter the final score a lot easier in basketball, but you get the point. Take the seven game Bucks- Hawks series, for example. Fear the Deer aside, how much excitement has the seven game series generated when the winning margin has been 10.5 points a game, with just one game falling within the 5-point range?

2) You Can Actually Follow the Puck Now. A longstanding and legitimate criticism of hockey on television has always been an inability to follow the puck on the small screen. Remember the horrendous trails of blue and yellow that Fox tried to use to solve that dilemma in the 90s? Now that all games are televised in high definition, the puck has become much easier to follow. Add in the 40+ inch televisions that have become standard in the home of any sports fan, and all of a sudden the widened field of view is able to portray a sense of the flow of the game and the involvement of the home crowd. We seem to take for granted how recent of a development this really is, but the difference that a big HD screen makes for hockey is very real.

3) Upset Potential. Though the NHL promotes its stars as much as any league, hockey itself is truly a team sport, in large part due to its grueling nature leaving even the best players getting on the ice just two-thirds of the time. The team aspect of the sport is refreshing against the NBA backdrop where Dwayne Wade has to score 40+ points just to give his team a chance to win. The NBA is wedded to its star players, and it's no secret that a team needs at least one superstar to get the calls down the stretch to ensure playoff victory. This leads to a very low upset potential in the NBA. If an upset is defined as any team seeded #6 or lower advancing (4-5 matchups tend to be pretty even), the NBA has experienced just seven first round upsets since 2000, compared to the NHL which has experienced 20 over that same time frame (this despite missing the '05 playoffs due to lockout). If upsets are what makes the NCAA basketball tournament so interesting, than the NHL comes closer to emulating that level of unpredictability. Indeed, during that time, the Stanley Cup Finals have included an 8-seed, a 7-seed, a 6-seed and three 4-seeds. Even with that, it's a minsnomer that NHL playoffs are a random crapshoot where good teams go unrewarded for their regular season effort. Since 2000, the NBA (Pistons in '04 and Spurs in '07, each a 3-seed) and the NHL (Devils in '00 and Penguins in '09, each a 4-seed) each have had 2 champions crowned that were lower than a #2 seed. Finals participants during that same time-frame in the NBA has included just 1 participant (Mavericks, '06) ranked #4 or lower. It has to mean something to a team's fan base to have a legitimate shot for advancement in the playoffs, and the combination of superstars, referees and primetime television seems to quell that opportunity in the NBA. There's certainly an argument to be made for watching a league's best teams matchup in the playoffs, but as a third party observer, I'll take rooting for the underdog over the chalk every time.

4) Team Celebrations and Tradition. Speaking of upsets, check out this video of the #8 seed Montreal Canadians beating the #1 seed Washington Capitols in a Game 7 on the road. The team celebration behind the goal is great, but how impressive is it that shortly thereafter the Canadians got their act together and composed themselves for the traditional handshake line at the end of a series? How about the Capital's reaction - no complaints, no arguing, just acceptance and the pain of losing. Plus, you have to love it that NHL.com actually provides a video linking to the "handshake lines" that culminate each series.

5) Length of Games. I wish I could find some statistics on the average length of an NBA playoff game versus an NHL hockey game. Honestly, there's no reason for a basketball game to take upwards of three hours from start to finish, and the end of game situations are absolutely infuriating. TV timeouts, regular timeouts, 20 second timeouts, fouls, free throws...since when did 30 seconds of basketball take 15 minutes to play out? We might as well skip the first 46 minutes of each game and fast forward to the moment where a team's star player attempts an important jump shot with the game on the line. Fouls are fewer and further between in the NHL, and come with a much more significant penalty, deterring its abuse in end of game situations.

6) Sudden Death Overtime Why do we all sit through the aforementioned 46 minutes of build up during the NBA playoffs? Because the NBA's best case scenario can give us some pretty awesome endings in the playoffs. But even those singular moments can't match the madness at the end of a hockey game, where a goalie leaves his net empty and there's just a mad rush in front of the opposing team's goal. Plus there's the do or die nature of sudden death overtime, which provide its own theater, one in which the clock doesn't matter and any shot could be the last one of the game. The tension during these moments are palpable, people can barely stand to watch and every check, line shift or pass in the zone gets magnified since any action could swing the game one way or another. Want to know the kind of joy that scoring a game winning goal in sudden death can bring on its overwrought fans? This video should give you an idea:


7) Playoff Ad Campaigns. For years the NBA absolutely dominated in this category. From the Amazing Playoff Moments of 2009 to the There Can Be Only One superstar soliloquies in '08, the NBA has consistently nailed the playoffs from an advertising standpoint. For one reason or another, this year's autotuned Focus! and Steppin' Up! campaigns seems to fall a bit short of those standards. Meanwhile, the NHL wheeled out this beauty (others in the series can be found here or here):



8. Conclusion. If this entire article sounds like an attempt to convince myself of this approach, then you're right. I'm no fervent supporter of either the NBA or NHL, and in some ways wish I was more obsessed with one of the two leagues. However, so far this playoff season, I've been completely satisfied with the choice to watch the NHL over the NBA...that is at least until we get to see Lebron dethrone the Kobes in the finals. Those games might actually be worth waiting 3+ hours for.