I've always said that I wish that the NBA and NHL could somehow not run concurrently because I just don't have the bandwidth to follow both.
The Stanley Cup Playoffs are probably better on the whole, but they get almost as much hype from middle-aged white dudes as the Masters, and the whole warrior mentality has become almost cliched at this point. The NHL has stinkers too, as evidenced by the way Winnipeg rolled over and died in Vegas last night.
The other thing is that the NHL has developed a gift over the years for being so random that there are many examples of matchups involving one or both teams that are not really a part of the conversation, but just got hotter or healthier or luckier than their opponents. If I did the math correctly, this is the 18th season since the lockout (God, I am so old). In that span, at least one of the Stanley Cup Finalists did not have home-ice advantage in its first round series more than half the time, and one of the ones that wasn't was the infamous 2007 Ducks-Senators matchup, that I think got negative ratings on NBC (Sorry, ChrisLong).
On the other side, the early rounds of the NBA playoffs tend to be fairly predictable (Bucks and Cavaliers notwithstanding), but more often than not, the final matches the two best teams. Meanwhile, the Stanley Cup Final has only featured two division winners three times since the lockout and only once (Caps-Golden Knights) since they went to four divisions.
The Stanley Cup Playoffs are probably better on the whole, but they get almost as much hype from middle-aged white dudes as the Masters, and the whole warrior mentality has become almost cliched at this point. The NHL has stinkers too, as evidenced by the way Winnipeg rolled over and died in Vegas last night.
The other thing is that the NHL has developed a gift over the years for being so random that there are many examples of matchups involving one or both teams that are not really a part of the conversation, but just got hotter or healthier or luckier than their opponents. If I did the math correctly, this is the 18th season since the lockout (God, I am so old). In that span, at least one of the Stanley Cup Finalists did not have home-ice advantage in its first round series more than half the time, and one of the ones that wasn't was the infamous 2007 Ducks-Senators matchup, that I think got negative ratings on NBC (Sorry, ChrisLong).
On the other side, the early rounds of the NBA playoffs tend to be fairly predictable (Bucks and Cavaliers notwithstanding), but more often than not, the final matches the two best teams. Meanwhile, the Stanley Cup Final has only featured two division winners three times since the lockout and only once (Caps-Golden Knights) since they went to four divisions.
