The NHL regular season is the most meaningless regular season in all of sports

Let us not sell hockey short here, gentlemen. I would argue that not only is the hockey regular season the most meaningless in all of professional, semi-professional and amateur sports--but so its post-season, off-season....pretty much put the whole sport in a bag and toss it in a lake.

See, there should not only be a "WHO CARES!" button, but now I realize there needs to be a "YOUR ARE BOTH WRONG" button...

GO THRASHERS!

SmackDaddy. Fair call-out on my Wings flaming out every year after winning the President's Cup, but it happens to plenty of other teams as well, including Ottawa and New Jersey. It certainly is more fun when it happens to other number one seeds, but I don't think it is good for the game long term. Frankly, an 8 seed should only beat a one seed a couple times a decade.

Your baseball logic is flawed. I actually think baseball has it right with respect to how many teams make the playoffs. Teams can't afford to rest their stars for 50% of the season (except for Roger Clemens, and that hasn't worked well), or get off to horrible starts. You have to be solid most, if not all, of the year. Granted there are the dog days of summer when the bottom feeder teams are already out of it, but that has never really bothered me. Watching a crappy baseball team play is far more enjoyable than watching a pathetic NBA or NFL team. Excellence throughout the year should be rewarded, and baseball does that well.

Now go the gym and work on that pear shaped body of yours.

I'm standing by my MLB example, Wolfgang. The regular season should encourage competition throughout the season for the benefit of the fan AND the player. In hockey, the reason that a No. 8 can beat a No. 1 is because No. 8’s remain hungry for the entire season. As the season draws to a close, the No. 7/8 teams lift because they know that if they don’t, they will fail to advance to playoffs at all. By the time the postseason begins, their game is finely tuned and they are full of beans. Meanwhile, the No. 1 seeds, who have probably secured home-ice days/weeks earlier are resting their stars and begin the playoffs as if the season were anew. This is where the excitement comes in. So-called “weak” teams who are on a roll stand a chance against the No. 1’s. All the while, fans remain glued to their seats until the last day of the season because every game counts. Game On, I say!

As for MLB, call me a broken record here, but after July, very few games really matter. Yeah, we watch to see records broken or if a certain player is in town, blah blah blah. Everyone knows that the postseason match-ups are, for all intents and purposes, locked-up in August and the “big boys” are merely playing for home field advantage. To make matters worse, in late August, the small market teams end up off-loading all of their talent to the Red Sox or Yankees just to ensure that they can afford to play the following season further exacerbating the whole, unbalanced, smelly situation. The old Expos were averaging 8,000 fans a game because everyone in Montreal knew their games counted for nothing and we saw what happened to them. I’m all about giving a few more teams a shot and keeping the big boys honest. Finally, the same argument you’re making for NHL can be made for MLB- in recent times, the Angels, Marlins, and Tigers were all lowest seeds and all (except Detroit- doh!) made miracle runs. It’s no different.

Game On!

Pointless regular season.