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SPHL President Jim Combs said he decided to bring this format to his 10-team league after a conversation with an executive from Austria’s Erste Bank Eishockey Liga, which already uses it.

“I immediately knew this was the greatest idea I’d ever heard,” Combs said. “The person at the top earns the right to pick the weakest of the bottom four. He can base it on travel, he can base it on difficulty of opponent, how the guy has been playing the past three or four weeks. A lot of times, you don’t want the eighth-place team because that’s the guy who has hustled and played hard and put the team together the last two or three weeks of the season. That’s the hot team.”

Combs said most teams started the year with thoughts of following the old format of picking the team with the fewest points as the opponent. But as the season has gone on, Combs said teams seem more open to picking what they believe is best matchup.

Calgary coach Glen Gulutzan said if the format was used in the NHL, he’d probably make it known he’d pick the lowest seed available in any case.

“The first thing that comes to my mind is all of us coaches are paranoid,” Gulutzan said. “So to actually have to pick somebody, you think immediately we’ve given them some fuel in a playoff series, right, like: ‘Oh yeah, they picked us.”‘

To add even more intrigue, the SPHL will broadcast the selection show at the end of the season so fans and teams can watch live as the matchups are chosen and the extra motivation is created for whoever is picked as the most desirable playoff opponent.