Left Handed Larceny

NHL Musical Chairs

by Eric Berkenpas

Photo Cred bleacherreport.com

As the NHL expands and changes, the realigned format of the league to an East and West conference in 1993-1994 slowly starts to not make as much sense as it originally did. Look at Winnipeg for example. In 1993 when Bettman originally introduced the East and West conferences, Winnipeg was in the West Central division with Detroit, Toronto, Dallas, St. Louis and Chicago. Geographically, that makes sense. All those cities are in the same general vicinity and so the majority of their travel to away games happened within their region. In 1997 the Winnipeg Jets moved to Phoenix and there began the geographical issues with the East/West system. Think about where Phoenix is in relation to Detroit, Chicago, Toronto, etc. Not too close, eh? Then, in 1997, the Hartford Whalers who were in a division with Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Ottawa, Montreal, etc. moved to Carolina, which is not in the general vicinity of any of the cities in their division.

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In 1998 Gary Bettman once again enacted a realignment to solve these problems. He went to a 2 conference, 6 division system where teams in each respective division were all in the same region. The only flaw in the plan was there were 3 divisions with 5 teams and 3 divisions with 4 teams. What was the solution? In 1999 the Atlanta Thrashers were added to the Southeast Division and one year later the Minnesota Wild and Columbus Blue Jackets were added to the Northwest and Central Divisions respectively. This seemed to be a pretty good fix as evidenced by the fact that there were no more changes to the league format or members until 2011 when Winnipeg reinserted themselves into the NHL by replacing the Atlanta Thrashers in the Southeast Division.

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Here were are in 2013. Let’s refresh our memories as to where Winnipeg is located. Winnipeg is just north of Minnesota in Canada. They are playing in the Southeast Division. That is a LOT of traveling for them. Outside of Winnipeg; Detroit, Columbus, Nashville, even St. Louis and Chicago have to do a fair amount of traveling to their away games in the west. Does it really make sense that cities like Detroit and Columbus are in the Western Conference when they are located in the eastern side of the US? Well clearly these things don’t make much sense to Gary Bettman either because just in the last couple days, information was leaked that the NHL is working on a new realignment plan. Changes are looking to be much more drastic this time. Let’s go over the changes:

First of all, there would still be an Eastern and Western conference but those conferences would be comprised of two divisions each rather than three. Detroit and Columbus will move to the Eastern conference and Winnipeg will move to the West causing the Western divisions to each have 7 teams in them and the Eastern divisions to have 8. As you can imagine, this makes for a confusing schedule with no good pattern or flow. The teams in the 7 team divisions will play each team in the other conference home and away, they will play each team in the other 7 team division 3 times each and they will play 5 of 6 teams in their division 5 times and the 6^th team 4 times. Add that all up and you end up with 82 games. Naturally, the 16 team Eastern conference will experience a little bit different of a schedule. Everything will be the same except each team will play teams in their divisions 4 or 5 times a season. Playoffs will also change. The top 3 teams in each division will earn automatic bids into the playoffs. The final 2 spots in each conference would be taken by the 2 best remaining teams. The assumed solution to the uneven conferences is that the NHL will add 2 expansion teams with no word on where those teams will come from yet. All these changes are awaiting the approval of the NHL Players Association and the League’s Board of Governors. If it gets approved, it will take effect next season.

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Now that you know all the proposed changes, let’s talk about what effect this might have on the league, either positive or negative. An obvious positive is that Winnipeg, Columbus and Detroit will now be playing teams much closer to them geographically. Washington will move into a division with Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and the NY Rangers which will make for some serious excitement as there will be 48-60 games played between those 4 bitter rivals. Colorado will move into a division with Chicago, St. Louis and Dallas which will have similar effect in the West. The road to the playoffs may prove to be more exciting as divisional opponents will by vying for those 3 precious playoff spots, not wanting to leave it up the their draw of a wild card spot to make playoffs. There will still be plenty of interconference play so nothing will change there. Given all those plus', it looks to be like an overall positive change. There are some potential negatives, however. First of all, the addition of 2 more expansion teams will spread out talent even wider in the league and create two more teams who will likely struggle out the gate when there are already teams like Columbus and Winnipeg who are having trouble establishing themselves in the league. One of the worst things for a league is to have teams that are so bad, they can barely be expected to win any games. This may happen, even if only in the first couple seasons of the realigned league. Detroit moving to the East removes them from a league with all of their bitter rivals making for a potentially less exciting season for them. The way the schedules will be made up is rather screwy as well. The way the schedules are now, you are guaranteed a definite amount of games against each team. While this is minor, it just looks and plays out rather sloppy.

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Altogether, I personally like all the changes and really hope they can be enacted. I think change in itself will bring more excitement to the game but the specific changes look to add a new dimension to the season which could prove exciting and fresh for fans. Either way, I think we can all say we are excited to see another full season of hockey!