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@MartindalexC You don't know what has been defined in terms of playoffs, and you didn't read the brief summary @Kenu wrote in the chatbox on that topic the other day. I love convoluted, boring meta-tournament stuff though so let's talk... First, how are wildcard spots given? Since you're so hung up on fairness I reckon you don't just compare team records across different groups since the teams haven't even played against the same opponents (even if groups are supposedly even-ish). So you want the potential WC teams to play against each other, and that takes time that all previously qualified teams will spend waiting so that's not good either imo. Also, why does your percentage of playoff teams have to mimic the NHL? What's the reasoning behind it, other than "looks like the NHL"? What about how the NHL was with 24 teams? Copying the real thing for no reason is not good either. With that said, the big issue with your proposal is that it does not lend itself to devising divisions for the next tournament. That's the biggest no-no. Here is what I had devised with this mysterious "NHLGamer staff" group and what @Kenu had presented in the chatbox back when 60 teams were supposed to play, and I'm going to adapt it to the 52-team format: The first 8 teams from each group make the main playoffs. After the first round of these playoffs, the 16 winners go on to decide the winner of ECL ofc, and the losing 16 run parallel playoffs. This allows to know the top 16 teams in future Div1, then team 17 (and maybe 18) because in a 3-division system with 52 teams you'll have 17 or 18 teams per division. Let's say 17 teams in Div1, 17 in Div2, 18 in Div3 for now. The remaining 15 guys in the parallel playoffs will go to Div2. The bottom-20 teams in group stage will also have "bottom playoffs" where 12 teams (the 9th-11th teams from each group) will get a 1st round bye. Not ideal but imo there's no way around it and at least only 12 teams will have to wait there. Anyway, the top-2 teams out of these playoffs will go to Div2. The remaining 18 will go to Div3. I do agree about splitting the playoff trees by "conferences" of 2 groups, meaning that the first half of the playoff tree is only groups A-B and the other one is only C-D, and they face off in the final. The reason for that is that I didn't find a way to spread every group in every playoff tree. Why is what I describe better? Because it lends itself to devising divisions obviously, but also because it gives bottom teams incentive to play ECL till the end. Also it's easier to understand imo, but that might just be because I came up with it myself... I'm not saying my playoff structure is what will ultimately be retained, but it does what it needs to do while yours doesn't so at the very least your structure will not be retained in its current state, no matter what. I enjoyed writing this wall of text of boring explanations. Thanks for the challenge Connor