Are Hockey Playoffs the Best in Sports? - Sports Central Showdown

0:01 You're watching [music] the Sports Central Showdown.

0:05 Welcome everyone to the Sports Central Showdown

0:08 with Alex Hutten and Gram Meckler going head-to-head.

0:10 Today's topic is are the Stanley Cup Playoffs the best playoffs?

0:15 Alex, what do you got?

0:17 Absolutely, the Stanley Cup Playoffs are the best playoffs in sports.

0:21 You're seeing it just this year right now as of us taping this.

0:23 You know, we're only in the first round.

0:25 I believe already we've had 10 overtime games.

0:27 That is 10 games in one round where

0:30 everything hangs in the balance on one bounce,

0:32 on one little fluky play where you're hanging

0:34 on the edge of your seat on every single shot.

0:36 And three of those games have gone into multiple overtimes as well.

0:39 So, that's even these marathons,

0:41 these stories that these all these players and these fans

0:43 come out with from all these games they've attended,

0:45 the excitement of that, the possibility for these upsets

0:48 and all these thrilling moments constantly throughout all four rounds.

0:52 I don't think there's anything like that in sports.

0:56 Gram, you beg to differ?

0:58 I do, Jamie.

0:59 I just don't think that the Stanley

1:01 Cup Playoffs are the best playoffs in sports.

1:04 There's just so many other places to go, whether you prefer a seven-game format.

1:09 Me personally, I love single elimination,

1:11 and that's why my pick for the best postseason is March Madness.

1:15 I mean, it's got a whole month named after it.

1:16 I've never heard of April hockey, May hockey.

1:19 That just doesn't roll off the tongue quite right.

1:21 I love March Madness.

1:23 When we're watching the playoffs, there's a few things that you want.

1:27 You want drama.

1:27 Well, there's no more drama than a buzzer-beater.

1:31 Even the press conferences, the postgame conferences are good,

1:34 are must-watch TV in March Madness.

1:36 That's how good the postseason is.

1:38 You also don't want to know who's going to win the game.

1:41 We've seen 16 seeds beat one seeds.

1:43 We've seen double-digit seeds go all the way to the Final Four.

1:47 We've seen an eight seed win the championship.

1:49 And lastly, that's really crucial for a postseason, in my opinion,

1:54 is And if you're not a big fan of the sport,

1:58 you can get into it at the right time.

2:00 You can know nothing at all about college basketball and jump in and root

2:03 for the lower seed or root for the bigger seed to go down.

2:07 That's the magic of March Madness and I just

2:08 don't feel like if you're not a hockey fan,

2:12 are you jumping into the Stanley Cup playoffs?

2:14 I don't think so.

2:17 So, Graham, you want to talk about unexpected outcomes,

2:21 unpredictable, low seeds winning.

2:22 How about this?

2:23 Since the 2004-2005 NHL lockout,

2:26 six different Presidents' Trophy winners have lost in the first round.

2:31 That is upsets at their finest.

2:33 That is so much exciting.

2:34 You want to talk about low seeds winning.

2:36 How about the eight seed Los Angeles Kings winning the Stanley Cup in 2012

2:40 and then two years later doing it

2:42 as the third place team in the Pacific Division.

2:44 One of the things with this new format where it's organized by division

2:47 means you get some of those lower seeds making those runs because, you know,

2:51 those teams might not run in to the very best team right away and they can build

2:55 up some momentum and create those deep runs

2:59 that they might not get if they had to.

3:00 And yeah, I know there are arguments

3:02 for and against the this current playoff format,

3:04 but one thing it does it makes for really exciting first round matchups.

3:07 When you've got a teams like the Minnesota Wild and Dallas Stars who

3:10 both had great seasons this year going

3:12 head-to-head in the first round right now.

3:14 You look at the excitement of it and getting a the casual fan into it,

3:19 I would argue that if you want to get

3:21 someone into hockey and into sports in general,

3:24 show them one period of overtime playoff

3:26 hockey where one goal can completely change everything,

3:30 which means that every single shot,

3:32 everything that even comes remotely close to looking at the net gives

3:36 you excitement and thrills and makes your heart race and your stomach jump.

3:39 That is one of the most exciting things to watch in all of sports.

3:50 You're bringing up my LA Kings, man.

3:51 That's tough for me to go against,

3:53 but you can't sit here and tell me that an eight seed beating

3:56 a one seed is better than a 16 seed beating a one seed.

3:59 I mean, we got 15s and twos.

4:01 I mean, I would even say a 12 over a five is a bigger

4:04 upset when the in the grand scheme of things than a one versus an eight.

4:08 And you talked about the new format for the Stanley Cup playoffs.

4:13 Well, what if I told you that the most watched

4:16 NHL produced game was not even a Stanley Cup playoff game.

4:20 It was from the Four Nations Face-Off.

4:22 Is it possible that the best hockey playoffs

4:25 are not even the Stanley Cup playoffs, Alex?

4:29 Look, I I see That is That is a That is a very good point.

4:34 The The Olympics and the Four Nations have both

4:36 been tremendously tremendously exciting to watch and, you know,

4:39 playing for your country is a whole different ballgame.

4:42 I don't know Does that count as a playoffs in the same

4:45 way that the Stanley Cup playoffs and March Madness do?

4:47 Is that its own separate category?

4:49 Is that its own special thing?

4:50 I'm not sure.

4:51 But I I think it's its own separate thing, but the point stands, Alex.

4:54 How can we say that that's the best hockey

4:57 in the land when it's not even the most viewed?

5:00 Well, I think that the Stanley Cup playoffs

5:01 also offer their own form of national pride.

5:04 You know, when no Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since 1993.

5:08 And the Stanley Cup itself, the actual trophy, is an icon.

5:12 When everybody is playing for that, when it's so well known,

5:15 I think that trophy sets itself apart as its own thing as well.

5:21 That's a good point.

5:21 We don't say the Vince Lombardi playoffs.

5:23 That is That is a good point.

5:25 Or the Larry O'Brien playoffs.

5:27 I do love the Larry trophy, but Alex, I won't go against you on that one.

5:30 This The Stanley Cup trophy is just amazing.

5:34 I would argue, though, give me a trophy that's made out of solid gold.

5:37 Give me the World Cup trophy.

5:39 Another one that I'm taking over the Stanley Cup playoffs.

5:43 Another one where you see the nations coming together, going against each other,

5:47 but a lot of times, especially watching the World Cup,

5:50 you see the nations come together and have fun before the games, you know,

5:54 throwing the pasta at the Italy fans if they

5:56 would have made the World Cup this year, of course.

5:58 Um but I think that I would put the World Cup over that, too,

6:02 and when you just see the energy, the passion of the fans in these two sports,

6:07 March Madness and the World Cup, especially, I just think that it doesn't match

6:11 this the specialness of those events is much greater.

6:16 You know, you you you mentioned the World Cup.

6:18 You know, I certainly there the international pride

6:20 that you talked about is a huge factor,

6:22 but to me hockey I find hockey the fast pace of hockey

6:24 so much more exciting to watch than the slower pace of soccer.

6:27 So, I think that's a point in the in the favor of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

6:30 And you mentioned in the NCAA tournament the upsets,

6:33 and I say this as someone who loves March

6:35 Madness and loves watching those upset kind of games,

6:37 but when you you come down to it,

6:39 90% of NCAA champions since the since the 64-team format began have been one,

6:45 two, or three seeds.

6:46 So, there ends up ultimately in the long run being a lot of chalk.

6:50 Whereas, in the Stanley Cup playoffs, you do get those lower teams winning it

6:53 or at least making the finals a lot of the time,

6:55 which is an unbelievably exciting thing,

6:57 because when you start out with that 16-team bracket,

7:01 there's really you can kind of make the case for any team to, you know,

7:05 ride a hot goaltender or just find something at the right

7:08 time and take that all the way to the championship.

7:11 All right, guys, last shot on goal, each of you.

7:13 Go.

7:14 I just love the wackiness of March Madness,

7:18 and I think at the end there's an argument

7:20 that you are getting the best basketball team in the nation.

7:22 Yes, Alex, the underdogs do start to fall off at the end, but when you put 64,

7:28 soon to be 72 teams all on one court and let them duke it out,

7:32 I think that you get the most bonafide, the most legitimate champion.

7:37 That's what I'm looking for in my postseason.

7:39 When you look for a a postseason, Graham,

7:41 you want some unpredictability and you want some greatness to rise up.

7:45 The Stanley Cup playoffs provides both of those while

7:48 also giving you a format and an opportunity

7:51 to where you need to watch every second of every game to get the best

7:55 experience possible out of it because everything can

7:58 when you score one point at a time everything can ride on one bounce or one

8:02 move and that's the best playoffs there is.

8:05 You're watching the Sports Central Showdown.

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