Suggestion: Realignment

[JTech780]

With the expansion news becoming official today and Quebec's application getting put off for now, partly because of conference imbalance, it makes me wonder if the NHL dropped the ball with its most recent realignment.

If you look at the NFL and MLB they an East a Central and a West division in each conference. Approaching the conferences this way would allow you to add Quebec without much worry about an Eastern Conference imbalance. It would also help make travel schedules much more fair amongst teams in the East and West.

I think if you had a Howe conference and a Orr conference and then had East, Central and West divisions in each conference, it would make future expansion much easier.

[Crzydrvr]

With the expansion news becoming official today and Quebec's application getting put off for now, partly because of conference imbalance, it makes me wonder if the NHL dropped the ball with its most recent realignment.

If you look at the NFL and MLB they an East a Central and a West division in each conference. Approaching the conferences this way would allow you to add Quebec without much worry about an Eastern Conference imbalance. It would also help make travel schedules much more fair amongst teams in the East and West.

I think if you had a Howe conference and a Orr conference and then had East, Central and West divisions in each conference, it would make future expansion much easier.

 

Rather than worrying about fairness of travel, I think they're worrying more about viewership.

 

The NFL can get away with that because they play once a week, with bye weeks scattered throughout the season, and half of those games are played at home. So you're only flying out and back 8 times a season to begin with, plus playoffs. That's why Dallas can be in a division with the Giants, Washington, and Philadelphia.

 

The MLB has a season that's twice as long, a bigger TV deal, and the kind of game that is just light enough on the body of most non-pitchers that they can and have played twice in the same day. While doubleheaders are no longer possible, the scheduling matrix basically has one team play each other for upwards of 3 straight days. So once again, they fly in, stay for half a week or more, and fly right back out.

 

The NHL and NBA are the most similar of the Big 4 in terms of game presentation and scheduling, and you'll notice that the NBA used to run the exact same alignment style (in terms of which teams went in which divisions). They're still very similar now, although the NHL having a more east-coast based league has made division alignment quite difficult compared to the NBA, which has a higher concentration of teams in the Midwest.

 

The NHL is more of a hybrid, trying to combine teams that are relatively close geographically to save travel costs while also remaining in the same time zone for TV purposes. Travel costs are lower as a whole because of alignment, and the NHL is in no position to be wasting more money for teams as a whole in order to make travel costs equitable. Because of the way scheduling works according to the CBA (can't be on the road more than X number of days, have to have a certain number of non-game days, have to play in each arena at least once, etc.), NHL teams can't align in a similar manner. It wouldn't be practical to align in the same manner as the MLB does, the grind of a hockey game is much different than baseball.

 

Also, both those leagues had a rival league that eventually merged with the NFL/MLB, and keeping those original teams from both leagues together (and the rivalries already developed as a result) is a big reason why the leagues are aligned the way they are. The NHL by contrast absorbed (the term is different for a reason) a floundering WHA, and there'd be no point in keeping alignment when only 4 teams were coming over.

 

NHL expansion would be so easy if Les Alexander weren't ensconced in Houston, but until a Midwest team gets an NHL franchise alignment will continue to be tricky. IMO, an Eastern team moving to the Midwest or Seattle and Quebec expanding is the most likely and favorable scenario for the NHL, but reality isn't that easy.

[xstrike]

@Driver (not going to quote a huge post)

 

I wish they'd put a team in Kansas City. Didn't the Pens almost go to KC at one point?

[Crzydrvr]

@Driver (not going to quote a huge post)

 

I wish they'd put a team in Kansas City. Didn't the Pens almost go to KC at one point?

 

Was supposedly a done deal until Mario saved the team.

 

Kansas is probably no longer a major player in the expansion game. $500 million is a lot and Kansas would need a Bill Foley with similar pockets and a love of the city to get something done. The Sprint Center is also no longer shiny and new (although IMO it doesn't make that much of a difference as long as they built it right and not like the arenas from the late '90s, which were cost efficient but didn't hold up the same way some of the older arenas did and some of the newer arenas look like they'll do).

[xstrike]

Was supposedly a done deal until Mario saved the team.

 

Kansas is probably no longer a major player in the expansion game. $500 million is a lot and Kansas would need a Bill Foley with similar pockets and a love of the city to get something done. The Sprint Center is also no longer shiny and new (although IMO it doesn't make that much of a difference as long as they built it right and not like the arenas from the late '90s, which were cost efficient but didn't hold up the same way some of the older arenas did and some of the newer arenas look like they'll do).

Sigh, then there might be more hockey fans around here... with a Crosby and such (no guarantee they'd still get SC rings though).

 

So lonely here in the non-hockey part of the US.

 

P.S. Despite the name, KC is mostly in Missouri not Kansas. Odd I know, but that probably affects taxes, etc.