Big Kahuna's NAHL Power Rankings - Playoff Twist Version

For this week's Power Rankings, I'm going to do another variation, as the normal power rankings have become boring and tiresome. This week, I'm going to pretend that the NAHL playoffs are set up with a 16 team tournament (4 teams from each division), with each team seeded by Big Kahuna regardless of division, except for the 4 division winners which will be seeded 1-4. The 3 teams not qualifying for my tournament are Albert Lea, Motor City, and Marquette.

#1 Seed - Topeka Roadrunners (South Division Champion)
#2 Seed - Mahoning Valley Phantoms (North Division Champion)
#3 Seed - North Iowa Outlaws (Central Division Champion)
#4 Seed - Fairbanks Ice Dogs (West Division Champion)
#5 Seed - St Louis Bandits
#6 Seed - Traverse City North Stars
#7 Seed - Bismarck Bobcats
#8 Seed - Alpena Ice Diggers
#9 Seed - USNTDP
#10 Seed - Owatonna Express
#11 Seed - Alexandria Blizzard
#12 Seed - Wichita Falls Wildcats
#13 Seed - Wenatchee Wild
#14 Seed - Springfield Jr Blues
#15 Seed - Alaska Avalanche
#16 Seed - Kenai River Brown Bears

Obviously it doesn't work this way, but this setup would provide some interesting match ups that you never really get to see apart from the Showcase. Everybody in the league is chasing Topeka right now, and the Central Division is a complete toss-up.


While on the subject of playoff seeding, Coach Cullen brought up an interesting point during the Express Coach's Show on KRFO radio Monday night. With the North Iowa Outlaws (as the host team) guaranteed a spot, that means the Central Division will get a second team into the Robertson Cup tournament. So let's say hypothetically that the regular season was complete, and the playoff seeds were determined from today's standings. North Iowa (#1) would host the Express (#4) and Bismarck (#2) would host Alexandria (#3) in the first round. Now let's say North Iowa beats the Express (not going to happen, but we're in Fantasyland right now) and Bismarck beats Alexandria. Since the Outlaws are already in, that would mean Bismarck would qualify as the Central Division representative no matter the outcome of the 2nd round series. So in an ideal world, the other central division teams would try and avoid the Outlaws in the first round of the playoffs, while hoping that the Outlaws win their series.

All of this is speculation, as I don't believe the NAHL has released the playoff information yet. Stay tuned, more on this as the season progresses.

See you at the rink.

--BK