I have had a version of this idea kicking around in my head for decades. When I was at university, I had friends who were serious football fans—particularly Arsenal and the English Premier League—and I became fascinated by promotion and relegation. Not fascinated enough to become an Arsenal supporter, apparently, but fascinated by the structure of it.
Your team can actually get kicked out of the league. I mean... What a concept!
Watching Ted Lasso lately has brought the idea back to the front of my mind, and unfortunately I have now thought about it enough that I am convinced the NHL would be substantially more entertaining if we introduced promotion and relegation.
There would be chaos, and I consider this a feature not a bug.
The NHL has made losing too comfortable
The issue I have with the NHL is the thing that makes me hate having any team I watch end up being in the lower part of the league. In the NHL, if you are terrible, what actually happens?
Yes, you miss the playoffs. Perhaps, some people get angry (if they don't just stop caring). Sometimes even the coach gets fired.
However, you get a high draft pick and come back next year.
And more importantly... There is no actual existential consequence to being one of the worst hockey teams in North America.
From a game theoretic perspective, we have constructed a system where being exceptionally bad is strategically useful. This is completely stupid when you stop and think about it.
Ok, so keeping that in mind, let's play a thought experiment: Imagine that the bottom three NHL teams are relegated every year. Not in a metaphorical "rebuilding year" way, but actually relegated.
You finished 32nd? Congratulations. Next year you are playing in the NHL Championship League. I hope you enjoy playing Hershey.
All of a sudden, there is no such thing as meaningless hockey in March. In fact, a team sitting 28th overall isn't playing out the schedule while everyone talks about lottery odds. They are playing the most exciting games of the season, because they are desperately trying to put distance between themselves and 30th.
Don't you see how that changes everything.
For example, take the Rangers. In our hypothetical system, a season near the very bottom of the standings doesn't end with a shrug and a draft pick. Every point becomes the difference between staying in the NHL and spending next season attempting to claw your way back into it.
Now, do I know that they would have played harder? No, I don't.
However, I suspect everyone involved would become remarkably interested in winning when the alternative is explaining to New York why the Rangers are now a second-division hockey club.
Build a hockey pyramid
So, how does this work? Well, let the NHL become the top division. Below that, take what is currently the AHL and turn it into an actual independent second division: the NHL Championship.
The top two Championship teams are promoted automatically. Teams three through six play for the final promotion spot.
Bottom three NHL teams go down. Three Championship teams come up.
Simple.
Notably, the current relationship between NHL and AHL teams obviously has to disappear. You can't have the Edmonton Oilers relegated into a league containing a team whose entire purpose is developing Edmonton Oilers.
If necessary, NHL clubs could have separate reserve teams that cannot be promoted, while the senior clubs in the hockey pyramid become genuinely independent organizations.
Yet, this is where it starts getting awesome. Imagine Toronto having two legitimate top-flight hockey teams.
The Maple Leafs and an independent Toronto Marlies both in the NHL.
Not prospects. Not an affiliate. Two actual clubs. Two ownership groups. Two fan bases.
Two teams in the same city that slowly learn to absolutely despise each other. A proper Toronto derby would become one of the best games on the schedule almost immediately.
You shouldn't have to buy your way into the NHL
The other thing I love about this model is what happens below the NHL.
Right now, if Québec City wants an NHL team, somebody needs to relocate or the league needs to decide to expand and somebody needs an absurd pile of money.
Under a pyramid, Québec can simply start a hockey club.
Start lower down.. Win... Get promoted... Win again.
Eventually, if the Québec Nordiques are good enough, they arrive in the NHL because nobody could stop them on the ice.
And the same becomes true for Saskatoon, Halifax, Regina, Hamilton, Houston, or anywhere else capable of supporting a serious professional hockey club.
You don't have to convince 32 billionaire owners that your city deserves hockey. You have your team prove it. That appeals to me enormously.
And then we make it even stupider
Since we are imagining an awesome world of hockey... Once you've built the pyramid, you can steal another English football idea and create an FA Cup-style tournament.
Every senior club can enter. We set it up with single elimination and random draw.
So now, in addition to the Stanley Cup, we get one magical night where the Edmonton Oilers have to travel to some third-division arena in Saskatchewan and play a team whose entire city has been preparing for this game since the draw was announced.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, Edmonton should destroy them.... In theory... However, that hundredth game would become local folklore.
Tell me you wouldn't watch the heck out of that.
Yes, this would be absolute chaos
Unfortunately, no matter how awesome this would be, there are approximately nine thousand reasons this will never happen. Especially since franchise valuations alone probably kill the idea before breakfast.
However, there are also television contracts, salary structures, arena requirements, travel costs, player contracts, the draft, affiliate systems, revenue sharing, and the small matter of convincing NHL owners to vote for a system under which their extremely valuable franchise could be relegated.
I understand this. I don't expect Gary Bettman to see this blog post and give me a call.
However, "the people who currently have permanent seats would never voluntarily risk losing those seats" isn't really an argument that the system itself would be bad.
Because from a fan's perspective? It would be beyond magnificent. The Stanley Cup race would still matter at the top. However, the relegation battle would matter at the bottom.
For other teams, the promotion battle would matter in the second division. Finally, a mediocre team couldn't simply drift through February and March waiting for next year.
And occasionally something completely absurd would happen... The Rangers would get relegated... Québec would come up... Toronto would have two NHL teams that hate each other... Some tiny club would knock an NHL team out of the national cup and spend the next fifty years talking about it.
There would be financial disasters, miraculous promotions, terrible ownership decisions, unlikely dynasties and entire cities losing their minds. In other words, real sports.
It would be messy. It would be unfair sometimes. It would unquestionably produce chaos.
But sometimes chaos is a good thing.
Especially when the alternative is rewarding the worst team in hockey with a draft lottery ticket.