Division Realignment Idea

[kvladimir]

New plan.

Same set up with 32 teams, 2 conferences, 4 divisions, 8 playoff seeds from each conference, etc. but every year there is a lottery draw on what division each team plays in.

Yeah some East teams and fans might have to stay up past 9:00 pm more than three times a year but the trade off would be that half the West teams would probably end up with better schedules.

I cannot physically say "no" loudly or deeply enough

 

[Chan790]

I'm okay with nearly any proposal that keeps Carolina with the rest of the metropolitan belt of the US Northeast and Mid-Atlantic and out of an infernal Southeast division.

 

[castle]

I'm struggling to find the problem that needs to be fixed here.

 

[DudeWhereIsMakar]

I am bothered by how south Florida and Tampa are when they should be in what is called the Metro. But I later learned they're in the other division because not only are all the Metro teams close together, but because they could give the teams in the coldest climates a break.

 

[qc14]

The divisions as they are currently are perfectly fine and don't need changing at all.

Things will need to change once Atlanta and Houston get teams and they go to an 84 game regular season but until then don't mess with something for no reason

 

[Jumptheshark]

Terrible for Detroit, Buffalo, and Toronto to play so many games outside their time zone.

TO would nuke it. That many games out west would affect the TVratings

 

[glenngineer]

Division 1: NJD, NYI, NYR, PHI, STL, DAL, UHC, SJS
Division 2: BOS, MON, OTT, TOR, CHI, MIN, EDM, VGK
Division 3: BUF, DET, CBJ, PIT, WIN, CAL, SEA, VAN
Division 4: FLO, TBL, CAR, WAS, NAS, COL, ANA, LAK

Each division has 4 EST and 1 MST. Each division also has 1 CST and 1 PST. The last 4 teams, 2 CST and PST each got split into a division.

Tried to keep it as fair as possible but with the way the CST, MST and PST teams are split up, it's hard to do.

I'm sure there are variations but this is where I landed if you want travel to be somewhat fair for all teams. And no, I didn't do the math on mileage.

 

[BLNY]

The divisions as they are currently are perfectly fine and don't need changing at all.

Things will need to change once Atlanta and Houston get teams and they go to an 84 game regular season but until then don't mess with something for no reason

I agree that there is no pressing need for realignment without expansion. In the event of that, or if the league actually had a creative bone in its body, you could scrub the idea of 4 divisions. Going to 8 divisions would allow for perhaps the best possible alignment. 6 division with 4 teams and 2 divisions with 5 teams.

Below keeps Montreal and Toronto together, which the league wants. It's got most of the old Patrick Division back together, which makes too much sense. Southeast. Cali/Nevada. A central division. A 'great lakes' division. A US mountain range to Texas division. A northwest division. All teams are close. All but 2 divisions have their teams in one time zone.

Still 16 teams in the playoffs. I'd be reluctant to go to a bye system like the NFL does, but playoff seeding could be done in a similar fashion. Each conference, 4 division winners and 4 "best of the rest".

Montreal​	Rangers​	Vancouver​	Winnipeg​	Carolina​	San Jose​	Utah​	Columbus​
Boston​	Devils​	Edmonton​	Minnesota​	Atlanta​	Los Angeles​	Dallas​	Penguins​
Ottawa​	Flyers​	Calgary​	Chicago​	Florida​	Anaheim​	Houston​	Buffalo​
Toronto​	Capitals​	Seattle​	St Louis​	Tampa​	Las Vegas​	Colorado​	Detroit​
​	Islanders​	​	Nashville​	​	​	​	​

 

[chaz4hockey]

What's you are thinking of as "weird geography" (I'm guessing largely the fact that the Florida teams and Carolina are in different divisions) is actually a measured attempt to balance the number of smaller-market teams with larger-market teams in each division.

Not a perfect balance, obviously, since the Atlantic has 4 original 6 teams, but this is likely one reason the Southeast Division failed (not just lack of success by the teams in that division) - majority of games that are against other teams that are relatively new and don't have much hockey history, but are geographically close.

TBL/FLA vs. WSH/ATL/CAR, as opposed to DET, TOR, MTL, BOS, BUF, OTT, vastly different in terms of appeal to the local fans.

Same with CAR vs. TBL/FLA/WSH/ATL, as opposed to NYR/PHI/NJD/NYI/PIT/WSH/CBJ, much more local market appeal with the New York area teams, and Philadelphia/Pittburgh.

What would Toronto and Montreal fans do without their ability to snowbird to Florida and see their teams against Tampa and Florida?

 

[Chan790]

Division 1: NJD, NYI, NYR, PHI, STL, DAL, UHC, SJS
Division 2: BOS, MON, OTT, TOR, CHI, MIN, EDM, VGK
Division 3: BUF, DET, CBJ, PIT, WIN, CAL, SEA, VAN
Division 4: FLO, TBL, CAR, WAS, NAS, COL, ANA, LAK

Each division has 4 EST and 1 MST. Each division also has 1 CST and 1 PST. The last 4 teams, 2 CST and PST each got split into a division.

Tried to keep it as fair as possible but with the way the CST, MST and PST teams are split up, it's hard to do.

I'm sure there are variations but this is where I landed if you want travel to be somewhat fair for all teams. And no, I didn't do the math on mileage.

Did...did you create 4 tiered divisions running east-to-west the entire width of the continent?

 

[robbieberns]

The only real “issue” that’s there to be fixed would be to bump up a couple of the Metro teams into the Atlantic and move the Florida teams into the Metro but I don’t know if it’s worth it to splice up the only division in the league that’s geographically compact. Florida teams going up North so often is not much different to the North and South split in the Pacific.

Played with the idea of going 8 divisions of 4 to maybe help out the Central from a travel standpoint but the results are negligible. Colorado and Utah just kind of screwed.

 

[Jumptheshark]

I do not see any more changes till the next expansion

Division 1: NJD, NYI, NYR, PHI, STL, DAL, UHC, SJS
Division 2: BOS, MON, OTT, TOR, CHI, MIN, EDM, VGK
Division 3: BUF, DET, CBJ, PIT, WIN, CAL, SEA, VAN
Division 4: FLO, TBL, CAR, WAS, NAS, COL, ANA, LAK

Each division has 4 EST and 1 MST. Each division also has 1 CST and 1 PST. The last 4 teams, 2 CST and PST each got split into a division.

Tried to keep it as fair as possible but with the way the CST, MST and PST teams are split up, it's hard to do.

I'm sure there are variations but this is where I landed if you want travel to be somewhat fair for all teams. And no, I didn't do the math on mileage.

Really f***s western teams for travel

Why not put Mon-TO in the same division as Van-Edmon-Cal-SJ-LAK-Anaheim?

 

[kvladimir]

I kept tweaking until I was happy with it, here's my final version (names are not perfect, but oh well):

Pacific	Northwest	Midwest	Central	Northeast	Coastal	Metro	Atlantic
ANA	SJS	CGY	CHI	CBJ	BOS	NJD	FLA
LAK	SEA	EDM	DAL	DET	BUF	PHI	NYI
COL	VAN	MIN	NSH	OTT	CAR	PIT	NYR
UTH	VGK	WPG	STL	TOR	MTL	WSH	TBL

And the schedule matrix would be like this (#games / year):

	PAC	NW	MW	CEN	NE	CSL	MTR	ATL
PAC	6	4	3	2	2	2	1	1
NW	4	6	4	2	2	1	1	1
MW	3	4	6	3	2	1	1	1
CEN	2	2	3	6	4	1	1	2
NE	2	2	2	4	6	3	1	1
CSL	2	1	1	1	3	6	4	3
MTR	1	1	1	1	1	4	6	6
ATL	1	1	1	2	1	3	6	6

This comes out as 78 games per team, then you could do a best of 3 or 5 play-in round that occurs over the time that those final 4 regular season games would normally be played.

One problem of course is how much the play between teams each year is more compressed compared to today's schedule, but it makes rivalries and divisions way more relevant. Also, a lot of eastern teams are in such high demand, you end up with eastern/eastern matchups between NE/MTR and NE/ATL only getting one game/year, so that would probably need to be shaken up year-to-year. Shrug!

 

[DarrylshutzSydor]

No. The Northern division would be terrible for some teams. No need to have teams in your division who are three time zones away.

Except his northern division is only two time zones away.