More bad playoff formats

For those who have complained about how the brackets were handled by the NAHL for the Robertson Cup Tournament this year, check out the Central Hockey League's playoff format for next season. The post-season field in the CHL has been expanded from eight to 12 teams for the coming season, with the top six clubs in each conference participating in the playoffs. Each of the four regular season division champions will be seeded either first or second in their conference, with the four teams with the next highest point totals in each conference also participating and seeded third through sixth. In the opening round, Seed 1 will play Seed 6, Seed 2 will play Seed 5 and Seed 3 will play Seed 4 in each conference. The highest seeded team who loses in the opening round will still advance to the Conference Semi-Finals and automatically be seeded fourth for the remainder of the Conference playoffs. Following both the Conference Semi-Finals and Conference Finals, the remaining representatives from each conference will play in the Ray Miron President’s Cup Finals, with home ice advantage awarded to the club with the best regular season record, regardless of any earlier seeding. All four playoff rounds will feature best-of-seven game formats. That's right... lose in the first round? Not a problem, here's your Get off the golf course free card. As for the NAHL, I'm hearing that they'll keep a four-division alignment, but cut the number of playoff teams to just two per division. No word on how later rounds might be handled.