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On the list of Columns I Almost Wrote But Am Glad I Didn’t, there is a recent entry: the NHL has a parity problem.

Much of what would have been the evidence for that piece remains true. The early rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs did their usual thing this spring, which is that they took a bunch of teams of varying levels of skill and ability and then churned out winners seemingly at random. Chicago, Minnesota, Montreal and Columbus, all strong 100-point teams in the regular season, didn’t make it past the first round. Washington, which won 55 games in a season in which no other team won more than 50, barely survived a pile of overtime games against eight-seed Toronto and then was dismissed in the second round anyway.

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There is something to be said for this kind of unpredictability, but it comes at a cost. When your season is an 82-game slog of attrition followed by the Wacky Wheel of Playoff Success, you run the risk that fans grow tired of the mirage of their team’s regular-season performance. We spend months establishing that the Blackhawks are a team of Serious Leaders and Clutch Performers, and then they get bounced in the first round two straight years. One could forgive Wild fans for waiting until late April next year to decide if they want to invest their hope in the team, given that a franchise-record regular season in wins and points turned into five whole playoff games. You want the regular season to be more than just the chance to get a ticket to a post-season lottery.