Ham Sports’ NHL Playoff Fight Club Bracket

Introducing the newest NHL Playoff bracket with a twist.

With where the season is paused, I already talked about the pros and cons of restarting it from where it left off. So the other morning, while I was in the limbo of awake and asleep, I was thinking of how we can start the season and get through the playoffs with an adequate amount of rest time for players.

Then, my brain thought of it. A fighting tournament between players of the NHL’s playoff teams.

Now if the NHL’s playoffs started today, they’d look like this.

But that’s where the true twist comes in.

Instead of a 7 game series, it’s 4 fights with a conditional tiebreaker. Each team will have 4 players – “fighters”, all picked to fit specific criteria, will face off against their opponent who has also been handpicked for the fights. No players can be double entered in fights.

The 4 fights have specific requirements. A team’s biggest player will face the opposing team’s smallest player. A team’s oldest player will face their opponent’s youngest player. The order of the fights goes:

Team 1’s Biggest Player vs Team 2’s Smallest Player

Team 1’s Oldest Player vs Team 2’s Youngest Player

Team 1’s Smallest Player vs Team 2’s Biggest Player

Team 1’s Youngest Player vs Team 2’s Oldest Player

If after 4 fights the teams are tied then there will be a 5th fight between the captain of each team. If the captain of the team is entered in another fight (for example, Chara is the biggest player so he cannot fight in the tiebreaker) or if the team does not have a captain (such as Vegas), then the 5th fighter will go to the player on the team with the most NHL experience.

Every fighter has to fit specific criteria so I went through each roster and selected what players will face off in each fight. Some players were slotted in purely for the chaos. Brad Marchand isn’t the smallest guy in Boston but like Hell, if I was gonna leave him out.

All information comes from hockey-reference.com

In the west, we have the St. Louis Blues vs the Nashville Predators. Then the Colorado Avalanche face the Dallas Stars, followed by the Vegas Golden Knights and the Winnipeg Jets. Lastly, the Battle of Alberta, Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames, which gets an amazing twist.

Over in the east, it’s the Boston Bruins and the Columbus Blue Jackets, then the Tampa Bay Lightning and Toronto Maple Leafs. Next is the Washington Capitals and the Carolina Hurricanes, and lastly, another rivalry, the Philadelphia Flyers and Pittsburgh Penguins.

So these are the fights and who will fight who. Then as teams are eliminated, the next team’s fighters slot in. This goes on until the Stanley Cup final.

This is obviously for the chaos but I’d love to see who would win in these scenarios.

Anyway, I want you to send me your bracket on who would win in this fight club playoffs. Grab the bracket off out Twitter, go through the fights and send me your bracket either to Ham Sports (@ham_sport on Twitter) or me (@shortman_hams on Twitter). I’m going to fill out my bracket to next week and keep you updated on who I have in the 2nd round.

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