Small rant; Mike Milbury go get fucked like a “love scene” from Oz. That dumbass said about the stupidest and effeminate thing I’ve ever him say in postgame:
(Paraphrased) Playoff OT should go to 4 on 4 or 3 on 3 because the quality of the other games suffer . . .
In short: 4on4 or 3on3 hockey is a figure skating circus act, nor quality
Secondly; if ya ain’t in shape enough, , strong enough, and aren’t tough enough to play multiple OTs, in multiple games and multiple series, amd/or beat a team that is then you ain’t man enough to win the Cup!!!
I’ll stop there for now but I’m still pissed about that beta/snowflake crap
I watched a great doc on Netflix titled Ice Guardians recently that does a great job highlighting the more physical aspects of the game. It's mostly focused on enforcing, however one of the things I found interesting is that nearly 95 percent of the players in the game want the enforcer to exist. I'd imagine if you poll the players about how hard it is to win the Cup, how grueling the playoffs are, how the whistles are let go, the high majority of them would be the same. They want it like you want it, the toughest and best win. Period.
Don't turn this sport into NBA, where the rules make it easier and easier for skill players to lazy their way into championships because hard working less talented players get called for barely touching them. The refs put their whistles away for most of last game minus a few weird calls and that is how it regularly happens in the NHL playoffs, and should continue.
As for the OT stuff, yeah I'm with you. Tired or not grueling series are meant to be part of the game. If you wanna argue well X team got seeded against an easier opponent and swept em, I'd still point out that they had to sweep em in the playoff environment. No wins in the playoffs come easy. No series do either, even when they do. If you end up letting a team take more of a chip out of you so to speak, with a longer harder series and it affects you the rest of the playoffs that is on the roster. Build to either prevent, or adapt better in those situations.
These type of narratives also help make the playoffs as a whole far more compelling. Because if it was so "biased" in favor of teams who get the best match ups then how come those teams don't win the playoffs every year? At the end of the day, we've had teams who have taken lots of different paths to the finals end up winning. Whether it was some shorter series, longer series, lots of OT, etc.
