Talk:2007 Stanley Cup playoffs/Archive 2

Anaheim Ducks bracket

Do they still reseed in the conference finals? Perhaps the Ducks can be already posted at the conference finals bracket. --Howard the Duck 05:21, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

• They can't be placed yet, because we don't know if they will have home ice or not. V-train 05:46, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Is there a system in the bracket? Like the team with the home ice is at the bottom/top? --Howard the Duck 06:05, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Top. V-train 06:11, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
      • So the order of the semifinal matchups at the bracket will be switched, if ever? --Howard the Duck 06:14, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
        • Why would they be switched? The team with home ice is on the top. V-train 06:28, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
          • Because in the current bracket, exactly below the Sens are the Red Wings-Sharks matchup. If the Sharks win, instead of the Red Wings-Sharks matchup exactly below the Sens, it'll be the Ducks-Canucks matchup since the Ducks have the better record, and the conference semifinal and the conference finals matchups are connected to each other. --Howard the Duck 06:31, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
            • It's not necessary to do such a switch. I think it will be fairly clear of what is going on if it is just left alone. Sukh17 ^{T • C • E} 06:34, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
              • So that means Anaheim could be added already at the Conference Finals field. --Howard the Duck 07:05, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I don't see a problem with this that much, just make sure that Anaheim is correctly placed at the top or the bottom based on whether or not it receives home ice advantage for the Western Conference Finals. --Sukh17 ^{T • C • E} 07:41, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

But if you'll put Anaheim at the top, you'd also have to switch the West's semifinals match-ups since they're connected via lines. --Howard the Duck 07:43, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

It's pretty obvious how the teams got there. There is only one possibility in terms of a match up, so the reseeding that occured in the first round doesn't really apply here. I say to just keep everything ordered in terms of highest seed to lowest seed. People will get it, it's not a matter or prior knowledge or anything; it's common sense that it is going to be Anaheim Ducks vs. the winner of Detroit/San Jose. Don't get to technical, the order right now is visually appealing and easy to comb through. --Sukh17 ^{T • C • E} 07:48, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

It's like this, if it's DET-ANA:

DET __
SJ    |_DET
ANA __| ANA
VAN

However, if it's SJ-ANA, assuming you won't switch them

DET___
SJ    |_ANA
ANA___| SJ
VAN

Which would be confusing since the DET-SJ series is connected directly at the top half of the West Finals bracket. If we'll abide by the "home team on top" convention, we'd have to switch them so that it'll be:

ANA___
VAN   |_ANA
DET___| SJ
SJ

--Howard the Duck 07:54, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

• DET-SJ is not connected to the top of the West finals bracket, they are both connected to the middle. V-train 08:18, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
  • But they're on the top-side of the bracket, so normally, what's on the upper left side goes to the top. --Howard the Duck 08:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Can we just keep it the way it was for the first round? Leave the bracket where it is, don't put in Anaheim until home ice is determined; the lines don't really justify switching the brackets in my opinion. Comrade Tux 13:02, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
      • I agree with Comrade Tux --Sukh17 ^{T • C • E} 20:35, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
      • I agree also. Andrew⁶⁴⁷ 23:01, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
        • 99% of the brackets in Wikipedia show the upper-left hand side of the bracket goes to the top portion of a match-up not at the bottom. It is always like this:

	Semifinals					Finals
	Matchup A
	Matchup A
						Winner of Matchup A
						Winner of Matchup B
	Matchup B
	Matchup B

(If you can [point me one non-NHL-related bracket I'd give you cookies) It will greatly confuse readers who are not into the NHL. And how about if an Western Conference team ends up with the better record? How would that be changed? --Howard the Duck 02:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

• Greatly confuse? What exactly are they going to be confused about? Regardless of the order, it's obvious who is playing who. I don't see what exactly non-NHL fans will confused about. V-train 07:56, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Because normally, in almost all brackets, whichever is at the top of the series match-up came from the upper part of the bracket, while the bottom of the series match-up came from the lower part of the bracket. However, since you folks says that the team with that home ice advantage should go at the top, if a team from the western conference advances to the Finals with a better record than the East champion, then automatically, the West team should be at the top half of the bracket, like this:

	Conference Quarterfinals					Conference Semifinals					Conference Finals					Stanley Cup Finals
	1	Buffalo Sabres	4
	8	New York Islanders	1
						1	Buffalo Sabres	3
						6	New York Rangers	4
	2	New Jersey Devils	4
	7	Tampa Bay Lightning	2
											4	Ottawa Senators	3
	Eastern Conference
											6	New York Rangers	4
	3	Atlanta Thrashers	0
	6	New York Rangers	4
						2	New Jersey Devils	1
						4	Ottawa Senators	4
	4	Ottawa Senators	4
	5	Pittsburgh Penguins	1
																W2	Anaheim Ducks	4
																E6	New York Rangers	0
	1	Detroit Red Wings	4
	8	Calgary Flames	2
						1	Detroit Red Wings	4
						5	San Jose Sharks	2
	2	Anaheim Ducks	4
	7	Minnesota Wild	1
											1	Detroit Red Wings	3
	Western Conference
											2	Anaheim Ducks	4
	3	Vancouver Canucks	4
	6	Dallas Stars	3
						2	Anaheim Ducks †	4
						3	Vancouver Canucks	1
	4	Nashville Predators	1
	5	San Jose Sharks	4

(section break)

• • That would imply that the Ducks are from the East and the Rangers are from the West when they aren't. --Howard the Duck 10:02, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
    • I tend to think that, once the matchups are no longer optional, we should not get tied into the "home team on top" principle, for precisely the reasons that this debate are outlining. When there are no "lines" connecting series to each other (as from the 1st round to the 2nd round) we can and should put the home team on the top line, but once the lines are in place, I would say we should just let the bracket play out as-is. This is how brackets usually play out anyways. For example, nobody would fiddle around with an NCAA bracket to make sure the higher-seeded team is on the top line, even though a visual inspection makes it clear who is the higher-seeded team and should get to wear their home jerseys. I think the same applies here: I would vote to put Anaheim on the bottom line of the West Finals, irrespective of who they face (whether Detroit or San Jose), for the same reasons that we're not going to invert the entire bracket if the team from the Western Conference happens to enjoy home-ice advantages in the Cup Finals. I see no potential for confusion here, which was the crux of the debate in how to order the QF pairings after the SF pairings are determined. 76.10.24.245 11:19, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
      • I'd agree to the anon but it might open a can of worms. How does the NHL seeds its teams for the playoffs? Do all division champions automatically clinch the home ice? Or is it by points? since the higher seed clinches the home ice advantage so this is pretty straightforward. --Howard the Duck 13:12, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
        • The Stanley Cup Finals don't get inverted - see 2002. That should be the only exception in my opinion, because of the background coloring in the box. I know consensus can get changed, but still, do we really want to go back and fix at least 15 brackets (see 1990-91 NHL season) for "clarity"? Wouldn't a non-NHL reader get MORE confused in who gets home ice if there's no indication, other than the seed, which they might not notice/know about? Comrade Tux 15:45, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
          • Yes, which would bring me to the situation that we may not abide the convention of the "home ice advantage on top" since having the higher seed automatically has the home ice advantage at the Conference Final since the bracket lines' work that way. Or, we can get rid of the lines so that the it won't be confusing to the reader which would automatically assume that the top part of the bracket goes to the top part of a match-up, and so on. --Howard the Duck 16:14, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
            • Regardless of how it is "normally" done, the lines do not link the top matchup with the top box, both lines merge in the middle. The lines themselves do not support such a conclusion, and removing them would just be more confusing. As far as if the western team has home ice in the finals, there's no reason the colors of the Final boxes can't be switched. V-train 17:02, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
              • I just think it goes against how a normal bracket gets read. Normally, the teams just follow the lines, and a visual inspection is sufficient to see who the "home" team is. I do not recommend sticking with the "home team on top" past the SF round. In the SFs, we have the luxury of the "ideal" visual appearance of the home team on top because there isn't a direct linkage from the QFs to the SFs, so we can have the SF "start over" with the teams appearing exactly like we want. Afterwards, when that is no longer the case, I see no reason not to use a traditional bracket appearance that sometimes ends up with the lower-seeded team on a higher line, due to upsets. That is a staple of brackets as visual representations of tournament action. 76.10.24.245 17:17, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
• (reindent): How do other websites display the NHL bracket anyway? --Howard the Duck 02:49, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

NBC's has Anaheim in the Conference Finals, with no re-ordering for first round and home ice on top. CBS's is pretty much the same, except they did re-order for the first round (but they put in lines). No telling until the next round who they put on top or whether they re-order. Comrade Tux 03:01, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

NBC indicates how I would do it (although I like the style of ours a bit better than theirs). As I noted, it is common in a bracket setting for teams to move to their line without regard to making sure the higher-seeded team enjoys the "top" line. Once matchups are fixed (as in this situaiton), that seems perfectly acceptable to me, particularly in the NHL context, when the higher-seeded team always enjoys home advantage. 76.10.24.245 03:04, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

For a third one, Versus' bracket is the same as the one currently on the page, except they don't have lines connecting anything. Comrade Tux 03:07, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I think we should wait on how NBC does it right after the Detroit-SJ series is over. Then whatever they do, we should follow it. How about the NHL? How do they display their brackets? Or we can get rid ot the lines so we use the home ice on top convention. --Howard the Duck 03:10, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

If the NHL has a bracket, I can't find it - a search for "playoff bracket" on their website doesn't return anything relevant. Comrade Tux 03:14, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

The NHL does not do a bracket on its website or anywhere else that I have seen. This is just a visual representation of what is going on in the NHL Playoffs, a convenient way of seeing, at a glance, what has happened in the tournament without having to sift through the textual descriptions of each series and piecing together the juxtapositions of them. There's nothing "official." If you look through the debate on the talk page from a year ago, some people were arguing that should be a rationale to have no bracket at all; I disagree, since it does perform a useful function. However, I would advance Anaheim in the current bracket to the bottom line of the West Finals (and Ottawa to the bottom line of the East Finals, now), because that is how brackets almost universally operate. It is not at all difficult to see who has home ice advantage because the higher-seeded team always has home-ice advantage, and at any rate, someone who cares to know that sort of information is going to know different leagues operate in different ways; if a reader didn't know before looking at the bracket how the league assigns home advantage, the chart would be a foolish place to try and find that information for the first time. This, of course, poses a challenge (as yet un-met) about how to signify who enjoys home advantage in the Finals, where seeding is no longer relevant or comparable. The NBA pages are taking to italicizing the "home" team; I would prefer underlining to italicizing, and for our purposes I would suggest putting the number of points in parentheses after the team's name, but I think we can come up with a solution that doesn't require post hoc rejiggering the bracket's shape to match up with the actual results (which is ultimately the thing we decided not to do QF-->SF). 76.10.24.245 03:31, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Really? I thought of all places the NHL website should have a bracket. Well then, either we continue reseeding up to the Conf. finals and eliminate the lines, or do not reseed and use the conventional bracket mechanism upper half goes to upper part, lower half to lower part, etc. BTW, for the Stanley Cup Finals I was the one who suggested italicizing in the NBA playoffs since it'll be easier to to and you'll not have to add more numbers. Underlining can be hard since different users different preferences, they can underline links - or perhaps we can delink the teams from the conf. semifinals so that we can add underlines? Or asterisks? --Howard the Duck 04:57, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I have a feeling you're setting up a false dichotomy, but if I had to choose between those options, I'd pick the latter. The reason we put the lines in after the QF-->SF transition is that the matchups are "fixed" or pre-determined. The NHL PLayoffs behave like a traditional bracket after the QF-->SF transition. As a result, I'd recommend doing what a traditional bracket does after the QF-->SF transition, which is putting teams on whatever line they most naturally should appear on, irrespective of whether they have home advantage. As for the NBA: this is not the place to hash that out, but I just wanted to say to Howard that I am mostly indifferent, I just think underlining is easier to read than italics (which, depending on where we go with this bracket in the Cup Finals, might be a useful observation in this debate down the road). 76.10.24.245 05:06, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm saying is that if ever we'll be underlining, we should delink the teams from the conf. semis onwards, since some users may set their links to be underlined at the "my preferences" so it'll be useless. I agree with everything else you said, though. --Howard the Duck 07:24, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I would be fine if we followed the "natural" bracketing of teams if there were another way to indicate home ice besides the current convention. Italics or underlining or something, doesn't really matter which - although, I think most browsers underline links by default, so it would probably be preferable to choose something else. Comrade Tux 15:54, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't care either as long as it won't add more numbers in the bracket. But if you people would do underlining, I'd say we should delink teams from the Conf. Semis. onwards. --Howard the Duck 16:18, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

It would seem it's been changed back, without the changer contributing to this discussion as it has developed. 76.10.24.245 16:48, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

You know what, since the seeds exclusively determine who gets the home ice advantage, it seems that we won't need to italicize/underline/whatever's agreed upon unless it's the Finals already. --Howard the Duck 17:00, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely. I thought I indicated that before; the discussion is only helpful to the extent that it produces a consensus on how to indicate home ice advantage in the Cup Finals. I don't see what the fixation is with having the home team on the top line of the matchup is. It's fine to do that when you can, but I see no reason to insist upon it for later rounds when the pairings are pre-determined. And I don't know why someone removed Anaheim from the West Finals without adding to this discussion. 76.10.24.245 18:57, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I added a comment right above the Western Conference Finals part of the bracket to point people to this discussion; hopefully it won't be reverted again. I'd also like to point out that if we add a method of showing home ice to the Finals, we would probably want to do it to all the rounds for consistency. For an indicator, maybe a dagger next to the team, and a footnote right under the bracket to indicate that means home ice? Comrade Tux 22:18, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Honestly, I think that's unnecessary. I think if you put in text above the bracket that all higher-seeded teams have home ice, and maybe even just write down the team that enjoyed home ice in the Cup Finals, that should be sufficient, or possibly italicize them in the Finals. To me, the question of who has home ice in a series is just not something you really should be turning to a playoff bracket to look up. A bracket is a graphical representation of a tournament path. If we decide to use some indicator for who has home ice in the Finals, it would almost be confusing to use that same indicator in the rest of the bracket as it would imply there is some home advantage determinant other than seed (such as in the NBA playoffs). Putting a dagger or italics or whatever for the preceding rounds is simply redundant; the seed says it all. 76.10.24.245 01:11, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I actually added a note at {{NHLBracket}} but it was removed, although the reversion was legit. Again, it doesn't matter for me if its italics, underline, asterisk, ALL CAPS (as much as possible it doesn't add anything else) but not a dagger (would be too big IMHO), adding more numbers or the top half convention. --Howard the Duck 01:41, 8 May 2007 (UTC)