Change has come

Disclaimer: The NHL is referring to these four new groups as "Conferences". Now as a North American bred sports fan, I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the concept of four "conferences". Four "divisions" I understand, but I had always imagined "Conferences" were something you had a pair of. So with that in mind, I will slip back and forth between the two terms, but I think you will get my point regardless.

Firstly, and as it relates to the Leafs' division, it is pretty funny that the league just said "**** it" and blew up the Southeast division. It was definitely the right move regardless of any geographical inconsistencies. Through no fault of the individual teams involved in the Southeast division, they all collectively received significantly less media exposure and less public cache because their divisional opponents all lacked any sort of history. Putting Tampa and Florida in the current NE division makes no sense geographically, but I think of it as "the cradle of hockey" taking one for the team. The added trips through Florida can only help those teams increase revenues, and it isn't like Florida and Tampa Bay will cause NE division fans to stay away from the arena in droves.

Its sort of an inconvenience I suppose for the current NE teams, but I personally don't have a problem with the added travel (granted I aint doing said travelling). This move was obviously motivated by the fact that the Florida teams draw so well when the Leafs and Habs are in town (and presumably the other NE teams as well), so it is hard to argue with the logic behind the decision. And personally I am happy to have more opportunities to catch the Leafs in Florida for cheap.

And of course, this division is the logical landing spot for the new Quebec Nordiques when the Coyotes inevitably move.

The other "Eastern Conference" division is basically perfect in my opinion. You keep all those established rivalries from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, while rescuing Washington from the sinking ship southeast, returning them to their rightful spot among the old Patrick Division, and more still, the division gives Carolina their best possible chance at achieving long term, financial stability by placing them in the NHL's marquee division.

The new "Western Conference", with its more time-zone friendly alignment seems to make a lot of sense, and solves a lot of individual team complaints in the most practical way possible. The two new divisions seem to lack any "Northeast division" like geographical anomalies and solve the problem of time zone differences in the best way possible.

While the makeup of the "Pacific conference" doesn't really provide much room for creativity, but the new "Central division" is a really well thought out grouping that should really please all of the teams. Detroit and Chicago don't have to deal with so many late night games, and Minnesota, Dallas and Winnipeg finally get put into a geographical grouping that makes sense.


The best part of the changes however is the introduction (or re-introduction) of divisional playoffs. All this nonsense with endless regular season games versus divisional opponents is over and the NHL is finally accepting the fact that the playoff matchups are what creates rivalries. You can play a team 8 times in the regular season for decades and you won't ever create the same kind of hatred that 2 consecutive playoff meetings will.

The only scary thing about this re-alignment is that it opens the door wide for the possibility of expansion. In the long run, it really isn't fair that half of the league's teams have a statistically better chance at making the playoffs than the other half, and I suspect the NHL might be looking to solve this problem by adding two more teams. There don't seem to be any real obvious candidates for expansion, but the NHL appears to be getting it's ducks in that row regardless.

My baseless prediction, Phoenix moves to Quebec City (and the East division), a Seattle expansion team replaces Phoenix in the West division. A Kansas City expansion team moves into the Central division, and Columbus gets bumped over to the Atlantic division. And there you would have a perfectly balanced 32 team league.













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