A TSN writer published a piece yesterday where he discusses the results of a GM poll concerning a wild card play-in game, and it turns out almost all of them are onboard.  Of 28 GMs who responded, 16 said they absolutely wanted a play-in game, and 5 others said they wanted a best of 3 play-in series.

The results of the poll don’t really surprise me.  What does surprise me, however, is how the NHL hasn’t already implemented this brilliant idea…  A lot of people complain about the play-in game for baseball, and it’s true that it seems counterintuitive to boil a 162 game grind down to a single night for two teams, but those games are also entertaining as fuck to watch.  Since hockey is even more intense by nature, NHL play-in games would be that much more dope.

Not only would it be awesome for current fans, but it would also help enlighten the birds out there who spend their entire spring consumed in NBA playoff basketball and nothing else.  Sure, the last few minutes of an NBA playoff game is exciting as hell if you have the patience to sit through a commercial break every 30 seconds, but anybody who watches both hockey and basketball knows that the playoff hockey product is a lot more entertaining.  It would be pretty chill to be able to follow this with the friends who are only capable of following the leagues that SportsCenter tells them to.