ORLANDO, Fla. – During its seven years of existence, the Southern Professional Hockey League has been through a myriad of playoff formats. Each one was an experiment of sorts, designed to fit the league at that time but always subject to change along with the SPHL itself. Finally, as year eight approaches, the playoff systems of the present and quite possibly the future is on the books.
As promised shortly after the league’s summer meetings, the SPHL Board of Governors approved a new eight-team, best-of-three game series playoff format 
Wednesday via a conference call. It was one of three new announcements of changes for the 2011-2012 season to come from the meetings in Las Vegas in June. The others deal with roster building and a new, stricter interpretation of on-ice rules regarding diving and injured players.
For SPHL fans, the format change might be a good news – bad news platter. Many have complained during the past couple of seasons about the format that included six teams. Much of the disagreement stemmed from the use of a best-of-five game series for the regular season winner against the sixth-place team with the winner heading straight to the finals. The other non-finals series were best-of-three with the finals being a best-of-five set.
With the edition of the Mississippi RiverKings to the SPHL stable, the league now had an opportunity to get away from the six-team format into something that was much more palatable to everyone. The two prevalent options were to go with four teams or eight teams with the length of the series based on the number of teams and schedule time frame.
“We looked at how many teams we wanted to get (in), what kind of format and what kind of schedule. We left the meetings in Las Vegas with an idea of what we wanted and then people went back home and talked to their coaches,” SPHL President Jim Combs said. “We were leaning towards (having) four teams in three weeks. We went back and said if we changed the format a little bit and stayed within the three weeks, why don’t we have eight teams make it and do three (rounds of) best-of-threes. By the time we got back home and everybody thought about it and we got on the conference call, they wanted to go with eight teams. It was either four or eight so it was either less than half or all but one.”
The new format will allow eight of the league’s nine teams to qualify for the post-season. Weekend one will see four best-of-three quarterfinal series take place. Weekend two will have the quarterfinal winners battling in two best-of-three semifinal match-ups. By the third weekend, the two finalists will be set for a best-of-three series with the President’s Cup on the line.
Combs said that even with only one team being eliminated, the regular season should be as exciting as in past years where post-season berths and seedings came down to the final day.
“I think it will always be down to the wire. If you look over the SPHL’s history, other than last year, everything usually took all the way down to the last weekend or the last game to decide who’s in, who’s out and who’s where,” he said.
Keeping the financial losses as low as possible, Combs reiterated, was another goal of choosing the format. He also brought up the availability – or lack thereof – of dates and ice in the home buildings, stating that being able to finish the playoffs in three weeks would help greatly. That was never more evident that the 2011 finals when because of scheduling issues, the Mississippi Surge and Augusta RiverHawks would have played all five games within seven days.
“The longer you go in the playoffs, the more expenditure and less building availability (you have). The building availability did play into it because let’s face it, a lot of our teams simply don’t have ice that fourth week of the playoffs. We always seem to have a problem,” he said. “If we all owned our buildings and the building availability dates were there, we might consider a different factor (like a best-of-seven finals) but the way it is and the way it works, there’s no way we can guarantee it. Like Mississippi last year, nobody was happy with the way the finals went with five games in seven days. Unfortunately the way the buildings worked out, that’s what it was.”
Another positive of the new system is that it will work just as well with ten, eleven or twelve teams, making it perfect for a league planning future expansion.
“That was another factor that people talked about. If we set it up this way and we’re at ten teams next year, we don’t even have to change the format. Or if we’re at eleven teams next year, we don’t have to change the format,” Combs said.
On the ice, the Board of Governors has seen an increase in what it terms to be “trying to take advantage of the referees” by players who take dives or embellish penalties in order to guarantee that a call is made. It happens everywhere but the SPHL wants to be proactive in not letting it get out of hand.
“The board was upset with players who fake or embellish penalties or non-penalties, basically trying to take advantage of the referee. I think it happens in all sports,” Combs said. “The board felt that with this league and the way the players were they were going to take a stand and make the players be accountable for playing hockey 100 percent of the time and not make it about something other than that.”
SPHL Director of Officials Scott Brand, who also works with the USHL through USAHockey, is working with supervisors from the NHL to teach the officials what is and isn’t a dive.
“If a guy is hooked in the upper body, his feet aren’t going to go backwards. It’s just inertia. If you’re hooked down low, you’re not going to go fall backwards,” Brand said. “We send in video clips all the time. When they (supervisors) see a dive that’s called or not called, we clip those and send them out to everybody. We think the players are good enough to skate (at this level) so if a guy goes down suspiciously, our guys need to be aware of it.”
Brand said that both the USHL and the SPHL track “divers” and that players are given the benefit of the doubt once. After that, a penalty should be called with a subsequent infraction drawing a letter from the league along with having the offending player’s name going on a list of divers that is distributed to officials. He added that in the USHL, if a player continues to dive or embellish, team fines and player / coach suspensions come into play. The SPHL has not yet finalized the extent of punishments it will use.
Taking it a step further, Brand said that the league would also like to eliminate the potential of players taking advantage by faking or embellishing an injury to cause a stoppage in play.
“We don’t mind honest, hard hockey but it really cheapens the honor of the league and the honor of hockey to have people go out there and act like they’ve been shot,” Brand said.
League president Combs said that the SPHL is currently working on guidelines to help officials deal with players who stay down on the ice. Basically, the thought process is that if a player goes down and stays down causing a stoppage in play, he will not be able to play for the rest of the period.
Both Brand and Combs agreed that the rule will take into consideration the safety of the players who are in fact hurt and not just those who are trying to draw a call.
“If you’re laying on the ice and faking an injury, you’re done for the period,” Combs said. “If you’re legitimately hurt, you need to take time to recoup anyway so you’re done for the rest of the period.”
The final announcement that came out had to do with the rule governing aggregate veteran games played. SPHL teams are allowed to have three veteran players – players with 224 or more professional games played – on their rosters. That rule was augmented two years ago to stipulate that the number of combined games played by the vets could not exceed 1,300 games to start a season.
According to Combs, the Board of Governors decided on April 22nd to lower the combined number to 1,100 games. The move, he said, was made to give the teams incentive to keep bringing in new, fresh and specifically younger talent and in line with the data from the initial two seasons.
“Two seasons ago, the average team had, for the entire season, the aggregate total was 818. That was the league-wide average, week-by-week, every single team, the average was 818. There was only one team over 1,100 two seasons ago. Last year there was one team over 1,100 and the average last year between all of the teams in all of the weeks throughout the season was 760,” he said. “We want to keep the league young. We want to keep the parity and keep it exciting exactly the way it is.
Although the change wasn’t officially ratified until the summer meetings, it was put into effect in April in order to give coaches time to adjust their player recruitment.
“The rule was brought up then is because a lot of the governors said they wanted to be able to tell their coaches here’s how to recruit the team instead of waiting until the summer meetings,” Combs said. “On April 22, there was no protected list, no one had done anything. No one had finished recruiting on April 22. It was done in April and it was talked about for two years. It was to give all teams a fair opportunity to recruit properly.”
The change also sends the SPHL back in the direction of its original mission statement regarding being a developmental league. Combs said that although having veteran players is fine, the league should be about those up-and-coming players.
“It’s about development. It’s about the young players that can get in there. It’s not about a place to retire. It’s not a retirement home,” Combs said. “It’s not a place (for owners) to come and say we’ll outbid each other to see who can win a championship by bringing in players that are really not single-A hockey players, players who really don’t belong in this league. By allowing that to happen, that would break the structure of the way the league is set up, the way it is supposed to be.”
Contact the author at don.money@prohockeynews.com
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