Has the time come for the National Hockey League to revert to the 2-3-2 playoff format for the Stanley Cup final?

For the fourth year in a row, the NHL has ended up with a final that is a geographic nightmare, pitting a team (Ottawa) from about as far north and east as it can get, against a team (Anaheim) about as far south and west as it can get.

There are no direct flights, which doesn’t pose as much of an issue to the players, since they all charter anyway, but it still means they’ll be in the air at least five hours and thus, probably wouldn’t fly out after games when the series switches venues, but will hunker down in their hotel rooms for an extra night, just to reduce the wear and tear on the players’ bodies.

It was like that in ’06 (Carolina-Edmonton), ’04 (Tampa-Calgary) and ’03 (New Jersey-Anaheim), all of which went the full seven-game distance. In fact, the last final with relatively easy travel was in ’02, when the Red Wings defeated the Hurricanes. It was also the last time a Western Conference team prevailed in a Stanley Cup final, no small coincidence. One could argue that teams in the West are used to the rigors of the travel and that makes it an advantage, if they have to start ping-ponging back and forth, across the country for Games 5, 6 and 7.

More likely though, the toll of a year’s worth of logging travel miles tends to catch up with the Western Conference representatives – and that certainly might have been the case if Detroit had advanced.

The Red Wings, an Eastern time zone team, played its opening round in the Mountain time zone (Calgary) and then had consecutive series against Pacific time zone teams (San Jose and Anaheim). One day, last week, I was outside the Red Wings’ dressing room in the Honda Centre and Kirk Maltby was frantically riding an exercise cycle – after the game – saying that he was doing it to get his legs going, which seemed to have been lost somewhere above 30,000 feet on the flight out.

Generally, teams have rejected the 2-3-2 format in the Stanley Cup final for two reasons: One, it might grant the lower-seeded team an extra home date if the series ended in five; and two, for the brief time the NHL played a 2-3-2 format in the final, the Edmonton Oilers capitalized by getting a split on the road and then sweeping their three home games to win the Stanley Cup in 1984 and 1985. Still, major-league baseball and the NBA both play a 2-3-2 format and live with the consequences. If they can do it - in sports that are far less taxing than hockey - then it should be good enough for the NHL as well.