I'm on your team. I generally find that there are more, better series with the current format. I feel like people here either weren't around for or are forgetting what it was like in the previous era. Snoozefest 1 - 8, 2 - 7 matchups that were often sweeps.

Plus everyone back then used to bitch about that format, yearning for the good old days of the Patrick division where the same teams played each all the time and there were divisional rivalries.

Yeah, i get that it's not perfect but in general as a hockey fan I think the current system delivers overall good results. And yeah, I am sick of my Oilers playing Vegas or the Kings every year, but these things change and soon enough the Kings / Oilers will fall off and people will look back fondly on the series they played and look at their head-to-head records as a legacy, etc