The playoff races will be dramatically altered, with teams battling within conferences for the right to move on. Travel will be drastically reduced for the teams out West while East Coast teams will have to travel a bit more.
Fans will have a chance to see every team visit their arena, but they will also see former division rivals less during the regular season. Instead, they will see their rivals in the first two rounds of the playoffs, which will be entirely intra-conference.
All 30 NHL teams will be impacted in some way, but some more than others. For a team like the Detroit Red Wings, who were tired of a challenging travel schedule, the new changes will come in handy. Others, like the Columbus Blue Jackets, will struggle with the onus of having to beat perennial contenders in Detroit, Chicago and Nashville for a playoff spot.
Tampa Bay and Florida also catch the short end of the realignment stick without classic regional rivals to play. Instead, they will be lumped in with Boston, Montreal, Ottawa and the other Northeastern teams. Similarly, the Winnipeg Jets — who started the realignment dominos to fall when they moved from Atlanta — will miss out on joining the Northeastern bunch that contains most other Canadian teams.
All in all, things should get mighty interesting when the league implements the changes it has planned. But which team will be affected the most?
