Impact of Playoffs on Seasonal Uncertainty in Czech Ice Hockey Extraliga

Abstract

In the top Czech ice hockey competition "Extraliga", 14 geographically close teams compete during a regular season in a pure round-robin tournament. However, the eventual champion is determined in the additional playoff stage; the regular season just decides which teams qualify for the playoffs and how these teams are seeded. This paper uses a Monte Carlo simulation to show that although the additional playoff stage heavily favors higher-seeded teams and consists of a lot of matches, it lowers the probability of the best team becoming a champion and thus increases seasonal uncertainty.