Talk:Shaughnessy playoff system

Use in NHL
"In the Original Six era of the National Hockey League (1942-1967), the circuit adopted a Shaughnessy playoff system (first place vs. fourth place and second place vs. third place) in which the paired teams played in a best-four-of-seven-games series with the winners advancing to the Stanley Cup championship round."

Not quite true. The NHL used first-vs-third and second-vs-fourth pairings for most of the six-team era. As there were usually three good teams and three bad ones, this gave the second-place finisher a big edge, so it's surprising that it lasted so long. They probably feared a rout with perennial champ Montreal squaring off against whichever of Boston, Chicago and New York managed to finish fourth. I think it went to 1-vs-4 and 2-vs-3 only after expansion. WHPratt (talk) 12:56, 10 October 2012 (UTC). I changed the article. It was 1v3 and 2v4 throughout the O-6 era. Reference http://www.nhl.com/ice/page.htm?id=25433.

Hard to envisage such a simple system was "invented" as late as 1933. More likely it was just discarded as too simplistic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.171.214.167 (talk) 02:52, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Don't other conferences use Shaughnessy playoffs too?
In the 2017 Big West Conference Men's Basketball Tournament, 2017 Summit League Men's Basketball Tournament and the 2017 SWAC Men's Basketball Tournament, the top 8 teams in the conference qualified for the tournament, and were matched in the first round playoffs as 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, 3 vs. 6, and 4 vs. 5. Isn't that exactly the same as a Shaughnessy playoff, just with twice as many teams qualifying? For that matter, you could say the same about the 2017 Atlantic Sun Men's Basketball Tournament, in that the top 8 teams qualified, although there are only 8 teams. Is the essence of a Shaughnessy playoff that there must be only four teams involved? --Metropolitan90 (talk) 21:02, 11 March 2017 (UTC)