NHL Musing - Divisions and Realignment

Hi everyone,

Kicking my last Wednesday in Saskatoon for a while, as the work week from now until Xmas will be in Calgary.

The rumblings of a possible NHL return to Quebec in a few years got me thinking about the locations of teams in the NHL, and the tough travel arrangement for some teams in the Western conference. I also did some comparisons with the NBA which also has 30 teams and conferences divided by East and West (NFL and MLB do not divide the conferences by geography).

What is interesting about the NBA is that the Western teams do not have nearly as bad a travel schedule as the NHL Western teams do (except for the NBA NorthWest division with Denver, Utah, Portland, Oklahoma and Minnesota). In the NBA Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland are in the Eastern conference and those teams are in the West in the NHL (Columbus instead of Cleveland). The NHL, having only one team in the mid-South (Dallas Stars), has Detroit, Chicago and Columbus in the West. Nashville also has it tough, as it's closest NHL city is Atlanta which is in the Eastern conference, and are at least 350miles from any other Western conference foe (St. Louis and Columbus).

The NHL should consider having uneven conferences: 14 in the West, and 16 in the East with 2 divisions per conference. To make it fair for playoffs, the 9th place team in the East could cross over to the West to take the 8th place spot there if they had more points. Moving one team to the Eastern conference (Nashville) would take a lot of long travel away from the Western teams and make travel for Nashville a lot easier. It would also make it much easier for Minnesota, who would now be in a division with Detroit and Chicago as opposed to Vancouver and Edmonton.

Here is how the divisions would look.

Western Confernence
West Division: Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, San Jose, Los Angeles, Anaheim, Phoenix
Central Division: Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Minnesota, Dallas, Colorado, Columbus

Eastern Conference
Northeast Division: Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Boston, Buffalo, NY Islanders, NY Rangers, New Jersey
Southeast Division: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington, Nashville, Carolina, Atlanta, Florida, Tampa Bay

A little tougher on the Pennsylvania teams, but a little easier on Washington. Also this alignment keeps travel to within one time zone in the Western conference in each division (aside from Denver). This has been mentioned as the hardest thing on players when travelling is the time change. There is a three hour difference between Vancouver and Detroit, and a two hour difference between Vancouver and Minnesota (and they play 6 times!).

Some fun food for thought.

Some thoughts on George W's trip to Canada later this week.

Cheers.