Yesterday, I looked at the NHL going back to, essentially, their 1993-1998 system with their Central, Pacific, Atlantic, and Northeast Divisions. Today, I’m going to throw a different scenario out there. Go with North, South, East, and Central (West is left out since the four West Coast Teams are either North or South). The North Division is 35 million Canadians Dream, and the South Division is Gary Bettman’s Sunbelt all thrown into one.
My main problem with this division is that I have legitimately no idea what to do with the Conferences. Do we lump North and East, and then Central and South? That could give us some trans-continental first round playoff match-ups, which I don’t think too many people want. So I present a slightly radical solution, get rid of the Conferences. I’ll get to what that means for the playoffs and scheduling shortly. But first, it would look something like this…
Scenario #2: Make it Seven
NORTHERN DIVISION
Calgary Flames
Edmonton Oilers
Montreal Canadiens
Ottawa Senators
Toronto Maple Leafs
Winnipeg Somethings
Vancouver Canucks
Obviously this is aimed at keeping the seven Canadian teams together. On the plus side, they would get a ton of games a year against one another, but on the negative side, there would be some pretty insane travel between Vancouver and Montreal a few times a year.
SOUTHERN DIVISION
Anaheim Ducks
Dallas Stars
Florida Panthers
Los Angeles Kings
Nashville Predators
Phoenix Coyotes
San Jose Sharks
Tampa Bay Lightning
If we were going back to naming divisions after league builders, this could easily be called The Bettman Division. Obviously, like the Northern Division, there would be some pretty insane travels going on for the California and Florida teams. It would pretty much guarantee a good number of Southern markets in the playoffs each year, which could be good for the league revenue.
EASTERN DIVISION
Boston Bruins
Carolina Hurricanes
New Jersey Devils
New York Rangers
New York Islanders
Philadelphia Flyers
Pittsburgh Penguins
Washington Capitals
This is essentially the current Atlantic Division with Boston, Carolina, and Washington thrown in for good measure. With the exception of Carolina, these are all franchises with a good hockey history. It puts Crosby and Ovechkin in the same division, and allows them to head to New York enough times a year.
CENTRAL DIVISION
Buffalo Sabres
Colorado Avalanche
Columbus Bluejackets
Chicago Blackhawks
Detroit Red Wings
Minnesota Wild
St. Louis Blues
Basically it’s the leftovers of the other divisions. It keeps most of the existing Central Divsion together, and adds in the American part of the Northeast, and the Buffalo Sabres for good measure, given how close they are to Detroit and Columbus.
Proposed Schedule:
Teams in an Eight Team Division: 4 Games vs. other 7 divisional opponents (28), 2 games against opponents in other divisions (44), 10 more at large games (many used for close geographic teams in other Conferences e.g. Toronto-Buffalo, Nashville-Carolina)
Teams in a Seven Team Division: 4 Games vs. other 6 divisional opponents (24), 2 games against opponents in other divisions (46), 12 more at large games
Playoffs: It would be tempting to go for straight four teams per-division playoffs, however this would probably be unfair. Oddly, in 2011 the Division that would benefit the most would be the Northern, and mostly at the expense of the Southern. We would get the following match-ups based on this years standings: Vancouver-Toronto, Montreal-Calgary, San Jose-Nashville, Tampa Bay-Anaheim, Washington-Pittsburgh, Philadelphia-Boston, Detroit-St. Louis, and Chicago-Buffalo. Sure some of those would be pretty darned entertaining, but it hardly seems fair that Toronto and St. Louis with their 85 and 87 respective points make it at the expense of Phoenix and LA who both had almost 100 points this year. While this does exist to some extent (Calgary had more points than the Rangers) but nothing like that.
Instead though they could take a page from the CFL and allow cross-over playoffs. Have the top three teams in each division qualify, and then have four “wild card” spots that go into the Divisional Playoffs based on the standings of the division leader (e.g. the fourth ranked Wild Card would go with the President’s Trophy Winner and so on). Based on this years standings the playoffs teams would look like this:
North: Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Los Angeles
South: San Jose, Tampa Bay, Anaheim, Nashville
East: Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, Phoenix
Central: Detroit, Chicago, Buffalo, Pittsburgh
That’s actually not that bad when I look at. The four Wild Card spots where placed were they were because Vancouver had the highest point total of the division leaders, so they got the lowest, Washington had the second most points so they got the next lowest in Phoenix and so on. Of course, they could put the option to have teams stick with their own division if they are wild card teams, but I kind of like the zany possibilities. Then after we get down to the final four we could reseed the teams so that the highest remaining team plays the lowest remaining team and so on. This gives us a chance (however small) of a Toronto-Montreal or Philly-Pittsburgh finals, which would be pretty damned awesome.
Pros and Cons
Pros: Keeps all the Canadian and Atlantic teams together, which is great for their rivalries. Playoff schedule, allows for some strong grudges to be build through constant rematches. Reduces travel costs for Central and Eastern Divisions.
Cons: Huge travel costs for the Northern and Southern Divisions. This could be offset if they did MLB Stlye Series (for example: have Vancouver travel to Montreal and play all of their 2-3 games there in one week). Change in playoffs essentially makes the Prince of Wales and Clarence Campbell Trophies a waste (although they could just add two more such trophies and make them for the survivors of the divisional playoffs, but that seems weird). Eastern teams in the North and South would have frequent horrible TV times.
Winning Teams: The seven Canadian teams, since they will get a ton of visits from each other; Detroit and Columbus for not having to go West so much; Carolina for getting some big name teams in their division; Minnesota for shifting to the same division as Detroit and Chicago (just like it is in the MLB and NFL).
Losing Teams: Bufflo, they aren’t really Central – they could be swapped with Pittsburgh, but that would create other problems; Northern and Southern Divisions for their insane travel costs, not sure how much Florida and Phoenix could afford that; Montreal and Boston – splitting them up just feels wrong; The Southern Division for having such insanely good teams in it!!
Moving Forward
Room for Expansion: A new team in Quebec or Hamilton would logically go in the Northern Division, to bring it to 8 teams, and Kansas City would go in the Central putting it to 8 as well. Should Phoenix (or another Southern Team) move North, they could easily move Carolina or even St. Louis south if they needed to balance any of the divisions. There is pretty much no room for a team in Seattle, unless it went into the North Division, but that sort of defeats the purpose of the all-Canadian division.
Verdict: At first I loved the idea of an All-Canadian division, but when we write it out I kind of start to hate it. There are a lot of logistical issues at stake, so I don’t see it as being very likely, and really more of a pipe dream for all of us North of the 49th Parallel.
Next time, I’ll go back to the Conferences, but instead they will be Northeastern and Southwestern, and be more aligned with the bodies of water on our continent than anything else.
Until next time,
G
Tags: Hockey, Ottawa Senators, Pittsburgh Penguins, Realignment Roulette
