NHL Realignment Plan Leaves Plenty to Be Desired, Like More Games Against Traditional Rivals

The NHL standings will have a different look next season.

That much was already known. How different was determined Monday night as the league's board of governors voted in a radical realignment while meeting in Pebble Beach, Calif. Life sure is tough for those guys, eh? But between rounds on the golf course the leaders of the NHL tried to resolve the league's peculiar take on geography, which currently has Winnipeg situated in the Southeast Division.

As the Bruins will find out Tuesday when they visit Manitoba for the first time in 15 years, winter in Winnipeg is quite a bit different than Tampa, Miami, Raleigh and even Washington, D.C., the Jets' fellow denizens in the Southeast.

Of course, Winnipeg's stay in that division was always meant to be a temporary one. It was done out of necessity after the second failed attempt to establish an NHL beachhead in Atlanta ended with the move of the Thrashers to Winnipeg to become the Jets 2.0.

There were two proposals on the table to restructure the league for next season. Both would get Winnipeg out of the Southeast Division. One would have no more Southeast Division at all. And that's the proposal that carried the day, reportedly with less than an hour's worth of deliberations. Got to get back out on the links after all.

Before the hockey purists start dreaming of further relocations to Quebec City and Hamilton, there's also going be no Northeast Division or any other division for that matter, and Florida and Phoenix and the rest of the Sun Belt franchises will still have their franchises.

It didn't have to be that way. Even with the need to move the Jets out of the Southeast, the board of governors could have kept the current six-division setup and conference playoff format and simply moved Winnipeg to the Western Conference to play in the Central Division, with either Detroit or Columbus moving to the East.

That would have been the simplest answer, and probably the best if it was the Blue Jackets coming East. The Red Wings could have continued to whine about travel and late start times for their TV audience back home, but judging by their success under this format for the past decade and a half, I'm not buying that it's really been too much of a detriment. Columbus, meanwhile, could use any help it can get and this could have been a chance for the league to boost a struggling market, and one they're likely stuck with for a while thanks to the Blue Jackets' arena lease.

That wasn't enough to sway the governors, though. They opted to go for what was behind Door No. 2, implementing a far more radical plan that will eliminate the current six five-team divisions divided into Eastern and Western Conferences and replace them with four conferences of seven or eight teams each.

For the Bruins, they would remain with the rest of their current Northeast Division rivals Buffalo, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, with Florida and Tampa Bay added. The current Atlantic Division also remains intact with New Jersey, the Islanders, the Rangers, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh staying together, joined by old Patrick Division rival Washington and Carolina. The eight-team divisions would feature a mostly Midwestern collection of Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Minnesota, Nashville, St. Louis and Winnipeg, and a far west union of Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Jose, Phoenix, Colorado, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.

The top four teams from each conference would qualify for the playoffs, with the first two rounds of the postseason played within the conference. What to do with the four teams to emerge is still to be determined, but they most likely will be reseeded for the Cup semifinals and finals.

There are some obvious plusses to that scenario. The return of divisional playoffs could rekindle some rivalries and the reseeding could create some interesting matchups in the final four. The Bruins could play Vancouver or Chicago in the semifinals, while a matchup with Pittsburgh or Philadelphia could await them in the final.

But there are also some considerable downsides to such a proposal. One of the best things about the current playoff setup is string of early-round upsets in recent years. Would a four seed beating a No. 1 in the new format create the kind of drama that an eighth seed advancing does now? 

Then there's the issue of getting the most deserving teams into the postseason in the first place. The 1-8 conference seeding in place now at least does a good job of that. Under the new format, there will often be teams finishing fifth or sixth in one conference missing the playoffs despite having more points than fourth-place teams in other conferences.

During the regular season, the new setup doesn't offer a lot of benefits either. The main selling points are decreasing travel, especially for the western teams, and assuring that each team plays every other team in the league at least once home and away.

The travel benefits are questionable at best. In the days of chartered planes, it's not like these guys are recreating Steve Martin and John Candy's odyssey home in Planes, Trains and Automobiles 41 times a season. And thanks to the balanced scheduled playing every team, most teams would probably end up traveling more total miles anyway. The Bruins certainly will, as they'll now have to make long treks to face both California-based teams and the Western Canadian clubs, not to mention the extra trips to down to the Sunshine State for their conference games.

The value of that balanced schedule is debatable as well. Any gains made in fueling rivalries in the postseason will be lessened by playing more non-conference games. The NHL should be increasing the number of divisional games. Instead, this proposal would keep intra-conference games at six for the seven-team subsets and actually decrease the number to five for some teams in the eight-club groupings.

Also gone will be the four-game season series with the teams from the other divisions within the current conferences. So the Bruins would be facing the Flyers and Rangers, among others, just twice instead of four times each season. But hey, at least you'll be guaranteed a visit from the Wild and Blue Jackets every year.

There is still a glimmer of hope. The NHL Players' Association still needs to approve the deal. Even if the union acquiesces, the league might get another chance to come up with a better alternative soon. After all, those Coyotes aren't going to stay in Phoenix forever, and there could be a need for another realignment once they move to Quebec City or Hamilton or Toronto. 

Of course, the NHL could also keep the new format and just shift that franchise into the Bruins' new conference, making that one of the eight-team groupings. Then Bruins fans will get to see even fewer games against the Habs and Leafs. Can't wait for that.