This just occurred to me, and its really simple. If the main concern with the 20th is the holidays, which it seems to be, why not start on the 20th, and just take a week off on the holidays? I believe this is what happened last year anyway, that there were delays during the playoffs. And the teams that will be left with the delay at the end could live with it, because they would be having the playoffs at the exact same time as they would have if we had started on the 27th. If we delay it at the beginning, every single team is affected.

If you think one more week of stats makes a significant difference, that's another issue. But the playoffs don't need to be completely tied to the start date.