NHL Realignment

Earlier (this is kind of old news), the NHL Board of Governors voted to approved a realignment plan for the league, which will take effect for the 2012-2013 season. Instead of the current two conference, six division format it currently has, the league will change to a four conference set-up. The conferences haven't been named yet--don't worry, it won't be Conference A, B, C, and D. Here are my suggestions for the conference names: A would be the Pacific Conference; B would be the Central Conference; C would be the Northeast Conferece; and D would be the Atlantic Conference. Essentially, the Western Conference is now Conferences A and B, and the Eastern Conference is now Conferences C and D, with the exception of Winnipeg moving to Conference B.

The main purpose of this change is for travel. Teams like Columbus and Detroit in the Western Conference, are in the Eastern Time Zone, but frequently have to travel to the Pacific Time Zone (3 hours behind) to play games. I can sympathize with that. Being a Chicago fan (Central Time Zone), but living in the Eastern Time Zone, I hate when they play on the West Coast, as games start at 10 pm, or 10:30 pm Eastern Time.

The top four teams from each conference will qualify for the Stanley Cup play-offs. The four winners of each conference will meet in the third round of the play-offs, with the winners meeting in the fourth round to play for the Stanley Cup.

My favorite part of this realignment is the new scheduling. Each team in the league will play every team in the league at least twice every season; once at home, and once on the road. This is something that I thought should've been happening a long time ago. Living in Boston, I'm disappointed that I have not had more opportunities to see my Blackhawks play in person.

I think the worst part of the realignment is that Conferences C and D have one less team than Conferences A and B. This will really come into play during play-off time; three teams will be left out of the play-offs in Conferences C and D, while four teams will be left out from Conferences A and B.  I'm really hoping that expansion to a 32 team NHL is in the near future.

I even have suggestions for what cities should get the two expansion teams. It's not really a secret that I really want to see a team come back to Connecticut. Conference D will get the Hartford Whalers. They still have throngs of fans, their merchandise still flies off the shelves, and I believe the team would do well back in the old city. Rivalries would quickly be renewed with the Rangers, Islanders, and Bruins, and the league would benefit from having another team in hockey-rich New England. The city does desperately need to build a new arena before expansion to Hartford can be considered.

The second expansion team would go to Conference C. In fitting in with the league's alignment plan based on travel, this team will be somewhere on the East Coast. The city of Quebec has plans to build a new NHL arena, which will really make the city more appealing to the league. Fans from Quebec city even travel in large numbers to games in other cities as an attempt to show the league what a great fan base they would have. They would also bring up a very strong rivalry with the current team in the Province of Quebec: the Montreal Canadiens.