When the Stanley Cup runners-up Devils next convene on the ice, there will be a new Collective Bargaining Agreement and it will be aimed not at achieving excellence, but at further diluting the NHL to even-narrower parity as preferred by its promoters.
That parity — none dare call it mediocrity — produced a Stanley Cup final between an eighth-seed and a sixth-seed, strongly suggesting there is not much difference among the top 16 teams.
Instead of marveling at the competition of the greatest teams we ever have seen, the story was merely which good, but not great, squad would flop least to lift the trophy. There are no more Oilers, no more Islanders, no more Canadiens, and the game is the worse for it.
That the Devils came within two overtime goals of winning their fourth Cup (Games 1 and 2) is testament to that parity, for they were a team that had flaws, but so did everybody else, including the Kings.
They’re better than the bottom qualifiers used to be. But the top teams are not as great as they were two decades ago, hence, eighth-seed beats first, second and third, and sixth beats third, fifth and first. And that lost greatness is what pushed the sport and amazed its witnesses.
No one for a moment is going to suggest the Kings, 29th of 30 in NHL scoring this season, are a team worthy to be mentioned with those Oilers, Isles or Habs, or even Red Wings or Millennial Devils.
Instead, the playoffs this year became the extra regular season where any team could knock off any other, depending on how lunar phases marginally affect individual performances.
Don’t be surprised, then, when the recent schemes to expand the playoffs to 18 or 20 teams are revived for negotiation in the CBA. The more mediocrity, the better.
Great moments in the playoffs were too few to make great playoffs. And the regular season, paying the freight for six months and 82 grueling games, means even less than it has lately.
The Rangers’ Eastern Conference regular-season title is no comfort to Rangers fans when it was stuffed in their faces in less than two months. The joy of the Canucks’ Presidents’ Trophy reign was even shorter.
The regular season must be re-emphasized to matter, and that means de-emphasizing the playoffs. Heresy? No. The NHL has already de-emphasized the playoffs in the wrong way, by achieving mediocrity through parity.
Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello last night said he has 48 hours, until tonight, to decide whether to forfeit next week’s first-round pick, part of their punishment for “circumventing” the CBA with their first signing of Ilya Kovalchuk. As Cup runners-up, they’d have had the 29th overall pick.
Lamoriello said he was “proud of how this team handled itself. We got where we got to because of character. … When you get to this position with a chance to win the Stanley Cup, and go through the teams we did, you have to feel good about your team. You don’t feel good that you didn’t win, but there were so many positives, and the biggest was the way they handled themselves in every situation.”
mark.everson@nypost.com