Tampa Bay Lightning coach Jon Cooper has been one of the best in the business this season. He took the Lightning from being a lottery team last season to second place in the Atlantic Division.
With solid coaching comes funky ideas and, even though Tampa Bay has home-ice advantage in their opening round series against the Montreal Canadiens, he has an idea how to change things up to make it more interesting.
As Damian Cristodero of the Tampa Bay Times shares, Cooper wants to see the top team go on the road for Games 1, 5, 7 and spend their four games on home ice in Games 2, 3, 4, and 6.
“Now that’s home ice to me,” Cooper said. “I haven’t done the research but I’m fairly certain more series are ended in Games 4, 5 and 6 than Game 7, so why would the home ice be in just the last game?”
Cooper said the idea is to give credit, and perhaps an advantage, to the lower-seed for scratching out a seventh game in the series.
The chances of this idea catching fire amongst the competition committee or with other GMs would be pretty close to nil, but the thought behind it is one worth chewing on. At the very least it makes for great barroom discussion/comment fodder.