As noted above, with the creation of the new Challenge Cup, that competition abandoned this system in favour of the system used in the Champions Cup.The 1980 Raiders, 2005 Steelers, and 1992 Bills tied for first in their division but lost a tiebreaker.The tiebreaking procedure used to determine overall seeding, which was devised in the Heineken Cup era and carried over intact into the current era, is almost as elaborate as that of the NFL, with a total of seven steps (a coin flip is the last).With the introduction of pools, the round robin portion of the Tournament of Hearts and Brier now consists of two stages.

an outright better record) than the third place team. The playoff seedings would look like this: #1 Toronto vs. #8 Boston (Boston is the wild card team with the least amount of points and will face the team with the most points in the conference which is Toronto) #2 Pittsburg vs. #7 Tampa Bay In most cases, the rules of the league call for the wild card team to survive an extra round or to play the majority of their postseason games away from home. In the NBA playoffs, home court advantage is determined strictly by regular-season record, without regard to seeding.The winner of the wild card playoffs, varying in format from a round-robin, a single-elimination or sudden death, usually meets the strongest quarterfinalist (the 3rd seed). The top club in each pool advanced to the knockout stage, along with the three second-place teams with the best records, using the same tiebreaking procedure as the Heineken Cup. The final four spots, two per conference, go to the teams with the highest point totals who finish outside of their division's top three. This ensures that each Championship Pool team still plays eleven games that count for the purposes of determining playoff qualification.In the NBA, the winner of the #1 vs. #8 series goes on to face the winner of the #5 vs. #4 series, while the winner of the #2 vs. #7 series faces the winner of the #6 vs. #3 series. In both competitions, eight clubs advance to the knockout stages. The top club in each pool advances; the three "wild card" places are filled by the second-place clubs with the best overall records. A coin toss is not indicated as a possible step.Both the Champions Cup and current Challenge Cup involve 20 clubs (compared to 24 in the Heineken Cup and 20 in the original Challenge Cup), divided into pools of four clubs with each club playing a double round-robin within its pool.

The three highest-placed teams in each division and two wild card teams per conference enter the playoff elimination tournament to determine the Stanley Cup champion Pre-season.

NHL.com is the official web site of the National Hockey League. As in the 2011–15 system, the conference winners will receive playoff berths. For the Champions Cup, the number of wild cards increased by one from the Heineken Cup era; both versions of the Challenge Cup had three wild cards, but the original version filled them in an entirely different manner.Division I independents do not play a conference tournament and therefore do not have an automatic berth, and can only receive an at-large bid to the tournament, which rarely happens in today's game. Unlike most tournaments which use a similar format, teams carry over their entire round robin records from the preliminary stage as opposed to only those results against teams that also qualify. The top four teams in each pool qualify for the second stage, formally known as the "Championship Pool." During this time, the #1 seed hosted the winner of the #4 vs #5 wild card game, while the #2 seed played the #3 seed. First off, the top three teams in each division automatically qualify for the postseason with two wildcard spots being awarded to the next highest ranked teams in each conference. Pseudonyms will no longer be permitted.It is a priority for CBC to create a website that is accessible to all Canadians including people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive challenges.This format allows for the possibility that any given division could send as few as three teams to the playoffs, and as many as five. Then as now, the groups played a double round-robin for the Regular Season, with eight clubs eliminated and the remaining clubs advancing to the Top 16. Greg Wyshynski . Whereas teams in the Tournament of Hearts and Brier are traditionally referred to by their respective province or territory (other than Northern Ontario and Team Canada), the team that wins the Wild Card game is referred to as the "Wild Card" for the duration of the tournament. It allows the fourth place team of one division to "cross over" and take the place of the third place team in the other divisional bracket, provided the fourth place team has more points (i.e. During this time, as the rules of the NHL and those of the western leagues differ (the main difference being that NHL rules allowed five skaters while the western leagues allowed six), the rules for each game in the Stanley Cup Finals alternated between those of the NHL and the western leagues. round, and if further tied, the score after the Jeopardy! Each team plays roughly six to eight exhibition games. The format is designed to ensure that a competitive team fills the Wild Card slot - due to the significant disparity in playing caliber between the top teams of Canada's fourteen member associations, it is widely expected that the Wild Card will consistently come from one of the provinces with the toughest fields in the playdowns, and that it will consistently be a championship contending team.At-large berths are not necessarily lesser teams than automatic berths.