Realignment 3.0: Correcting the NHL’s self-inflicted mistake… again

It’s my annual exercise in futility. I am the Sisyphus of hockey writers, doing the NHL’s heavy lifting, only to be kicked back down the mountain, accompanied by uproarious laughter or callous indifference.

Why do I continue? It’s a good question for which I have no answer. Maybe I’m hoping my efforts will one day catch the league’s eye and somebody will realize how insane the NHL’s solution looks to objective observers.

I’m talking about the Coyotes’ move to the Central Division, of course, because nothing says central quite like Arizona. The Coyotes will begin their first Central Division road trip in Chicago on Friday, with stops in Nashville and St. Louis as well.

The simplistic argument that you’ll hear from many so-called analysts is that the league had to make this move because shiny-new Seattle was a logical fit in the Pacific, and this move balanced the divisions at eight teams apiece. That’s true if that’s as far as you go with your analysis, but if you are truly trying to serve the best interests of all of your teams, you should at least explore other options. How could simply considering other plans be a bad thing?

The NHL Board of Governors did not. That collective took the easy way out. The lazy way out. They were not interested in more work. Any work.

At this point, I’d like to pause to preclude the predictable and ignorant comments about the Coyotes moving to Houston to make the Central Division more logical. Seriously, just shut it. I have no more tolerance for idiotic relocation rumors.

So what does the NHL’s realignment-of-least-resistance mean for the Coyotes? It means two months of the regular season where the division opponents are two time zones away. It means six division cities that are close to a three-hour flight (or more) away (toss in customs in Winnipeg and it gets even more absurd). It means nothing even remotely resembling a regional rivalry.

Maybe if you squint hard, you can convince yourself of a future Dallas or Colorado rivalry, but Chicago, Minnesota, St. Louis, Winnipeg and Nashville? Don’t waste your breath on me. I’ll just think you’re cognitively challenged.

There is a better solution. There probably are several, but after shuffling the teams into multiple configurations, I have settled on eight, four-team divisions like the NFL model. Trust me, I tried four, eight-team divisions but every configuration is problematic. Feel free to throw your own take in the comments section but I do not think that format works as well as the one that the NFL is already employing. 

This proposed format cuts down on travel because it focuses on regional play and it re-incorporates the series format that the players liked so much last season. If a team plays another team more than twice in a season, I’d like to see a two-game series in one city incorporated into the schedule. That should alleviate a lot of the travel issues while avoiding the lengthy series against the same team that team executives worried would cost them at the box office because fans get bored with the same matchups.

As Leah Merrall noted on our podcast, there is also the opportunity for more revenue via naming rights for each division. The NHL did it during the Covid season. Here is another opportunity. We know the league likes revenue.

As for realignment, let’s start with the Western Conference because we’re overdue for something called a West-Coast bias.

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WESTERN CONFERENCE

Southwest Division
Anaheim
Arizona
Los Angeles
Vegas
Comment: East Coast teams benefit all the time from a tight geographic cluster. This one makes too much sense in the Southwest not to do it.

Northwest Division
Colorado
San Jose
Seattle
Vancouver
Comment: Sorry, Colorado. You already play in no-man’s land. There is no good scenario for you unless you convince Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City and Kansas City to consider expansion.

North Division
Calgary
Edmonton
Minnesota
Winnipeg
Comment: I kept the Alberta teams together because apparently this rivalry is important while the Red Wings-Blackhawks rivalry was not. Apologies to Minnesota for all of the border crossings, but if the NHL institutes two-game series, the Wild could knock out six division games on one Canadian road trip.

Central Division
Chicago
Dallas
Nashville
St. Louis
Comment: It still bugs me that Nashville is in this division, but the Preds’ odd fixation with Chicago lends credence to this placement.

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EASTERN CONFERENCE

Southeast Division
Carolina
Florida
Tampa
Washington
Comment: I’d prefer to have Nashville here and Washington in another division, but the conferences don’t quite even out if I do that and D.C. is far enough south to make it work.

Metro Division
Boston
New Jersey
New York Islanders
New York Rangers
Comment: How do you augment the already toxic Boston-New York rivalry? Multiply it times three.

Canadian Division
Buffalo
Montreal
Ottawa
Toronto
Comment: Let’s face it, Buffalo is basically a Canadian city.

Northeast Division
Detroit
Columbus
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Comment: I do like rivalries, so I kept the Penguins and Flyers together and hoped for an Ohio-Michigan rivalry the likes of which college football already features.

Schedule

One of the challenges that the NHL always faces is logical scheduling. Team executives are adamant about every team playing in every city every year so that means 32 games against the other conference’s 16 teams are locked up.

Division games still need to be emphasized more than non-division games so here is my solution. 

Non-conference
Two games (home and away) vs. the 16 non-conference teams (32 games total)

Intra-conference
Two games (home and away) vs. two of the three other conference divisions (16 games total)
Four games (two home, two away) vs. one conference division (16 games total)
Six games (three home, three away) vs. division teams (18 total)

Voilà: 82 games.

You’re probably wondering about those four games against one division within the conference. I would have that rotate each season, so in one season, the Southwest Division would play those extra games against the Northwest. The next season, they would face the North, and the following season, they would face the Central. The NHL could even market this unique aspect of the scheduling. Call them Division Duels, or something better than that.

Playoffs

The playoff format would be simple. Each division winner would earn a playoff spot and one of the top four seeds (based on points) for the first round. The next four playoff teams in each conference would be decided by points.

I think it’s important to reward a team for winning a division. Even if a division is weak one season, it still means something to come out on top. After that, I think it’s most important to get the best teams in the playoffs.

I’d also like to see the playoffs re-seeded after each round. If a Cinderella team posts an upset in the first round, that team shouldn’t be rewarded with an easier path for the remainder of the playoffs because it did not earn that path over an 82-game schedule.

At any rate, that’s version 3.0 of my annual realignment story. Feel free to offer your own plan in the comments section below.

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