During the 1986 offseason, a very strange thing happened in the NHL: The league made a rule change that nobody got all that upset about.
That was rare, even back then, because fans like to complain about things. But this change was so simple, and so obviously the right decision, that there really wasn’t anything to complain about. Or so we thought.
The rule had to do with the playoff format, and the league’s ongoing attempts to have one that made sense. Since 1974, when the league added a fourth round to the playoff tournament, the first round had always been shorter than the others.