Early Morning Logic: Solving Realignment

On a Thursday morning with zero cups of coffee in my system I’ve decided to solve the NHL realignment problem. I’ve put some thoughts together before on the topic, and for the most part I favour the two division per conference format, with the potential retraction of two teams if possible, but I don’t see it happening. Instead I wanted to look at what realignment would look like with the current three division per conference structure with the following assumptions:

1. The NHL will not be relocating another franchise in the near future.
2. The NHL plans to stay a 30 team league.
3. Winnipeg will not stay in the South East.
4. Detroit has thrown a big enough tantrum that they will be moving to the East.
5. Nobody cares about the Senators

The idea I came up with is somewhat of a blend of geographic, time zone and competitive reasoning to put together the divisions, and while like every other Realignment idea that has been floated it is far from perfect.

The Divisions:

 

 

South West	Canadian	Central	North East	Atlantic	South East
Anaheim	Calgary	Chicago	Boston	New Jersey	Carolina
Los Angeles	Edmonton	Dallas	Buffalo	NY Islanders	Florida
Phoenix	Vancouver	Minnesota	Detroit	NY Rangers	Nashville
San Jose	Winnipeg	St. Louis	Montreal	Philadelphia	Tampa Bay
Colorado	Ottawa	Columbus	Toronto	Pittsburgh	Washington

Moving through the obvious divisions first, the South West is pretty self explanatory. Geographically these teams are the five closest teams to each other and other than Colorado they are all on Pacific Time.

The Atlantic remains untouched. Why disrupt Metro-NY rivalries or the Flyers/Pens rivalry? It’s easy to add to this division, but next to impossible to subtract unless Philly and Pittsburgh leave the division together.

The South East division see’s Nashville added as a Central Time Zone team to an entirely Eastern Time Zone division. Geographically the Preds are closer to this division than other teams likely to be shuffled here, but from a time zone standpoint you could argue that Columbus makes more sense than Nashville.

The Central division sees Dallas and Minnesota added to a division with St. Louis, Chicago, and Columbus remaining. As mentioned in the above paragraph it may make more sense for Nashville to remain and Columbus to leave to have the entire division in the same time zone, as well as it would remove the isolation of Dallas as the only Southern team in the division. The addition of Minnesota is an obvious one as they would easily pick up on old Norris division rivalries with Chicago and St. Louis while having the opportunity to compete against their former franchise, the Stars.

The North East division would remain largely intact but would see Ottawa swapped out for Detroit. The choice to move Ottawa over the more geographically appropriate Leafs is based in the established rivalries that Toronto has within the Eastern Conference. Ottawa really has nothing special outside of the Battle of Ontario, which isn’t anything worth fighting to preserve.

From a Leafs fan perspective I hate myself for suggesting the division be made tougher as Detroit would certainly be a perennial playoff team and would bump Toronto back down to the bottom rung of the division, but assuming Detroit is coming to the East likely means assuming they are coming to the North East.

The final division I suggested is the Canadian Division. The largest geographic division, the only one that includes all four time zones the league operates in, and also one that is absorbing two teams. Looking at this division as the old North West division, the division was already in three time zones, adding Winnipeg over Minnesota is actually an upgrade geographically too. The only real trade off is Ottawa for Colorado.

Time Zone wise this is terrible, more so for Ottawa than the Western teams. Ottawa fans dealing with 10pm starts have a lot more to complain about than Vancouver fans dealing with 5pm starts.

Geographically it’s terrible. Colorado was far from the rest of the North West at 1800kms, Ottawa is over 3000kms away. Though using Calgary as an example it’s the difference between a two and half hour flight and a three and half hour flight.

What is gained from all of this inconvenience? Something that many Canadian hockey fans have asked for, a Canadian division which in turn means more all Canadian matchups, which also means a minimum of one Canadian team in the playoffs each season.

Trade-offs and concessions will have to be made for Ottawa. They would need a thoughtful schedule to be put together as to avoid games in Ottawa and Vancouver on back to back nights, early start times for games in Pacific/Mountain Time Zones and might require minimal road trips to the Southwest division, but again, this is Ottawa, you aren’t inconveniencing too many fans by this shuffle.

Ultimately with this alignment you wind up with five divisions that make sense and a Canadian division. Four of the Six divisions are highly competitive, and Vancouver and Chicago easily win their divisions. Each division contains important rivalries or at least the potential to build new ones, though the Central division will understandably be upset with Detroit gone.

In conclusion this is a product of me having too much time on my hands. Will this happen? No. Should it happen? Probably not. The reality of the situation is that if Detroit is in fact coming to the East it creates an endless number of imperfect scenarios, none of which don’t screw over at least one team and none of which that change the fact that Vancouver will always have a shitty travel schedule. At the end of the day why not have the Senators be the team that is screwed over the most?