Trying to put together Divisions based primarily on RIVALRIES is an exercise in futility.
Just put teams together in Divisions that make the most travel and TV broadcast sense for the League, give them a schedule that enables sufficient games against, especially Conference teams, that every team gets a chance to have a little animosity against its Conference opponents. And then just let the rival matchups happen as they may, in the Playoffs!
Can we Please just make Divisions that make travel and TV broadcast sense! And that don't isolate the most undesired teams in Divisions by themselves in Divisions that are disadvantageous to them.
I think making an alignment which gets teams playing their rivals is a more important goal than "travel." Time zones, yes, but again, travel is determined by the ORDER of games on the schedule (Washington's CAR-MIN-CAL road trip pretty much craps on the concept that a Southeast Division helps travel!)
And you can schedule around the division's shortcomings.
This is probably definitely the biggest non-starter in this whole thread.
There is no way in hell the League splits up the Rangers & Isles (& Devils).
The only reason the Mets/Yankees and Jets/Giants are split is history - The AL and NL were separate leagues and the AFC/NFC split is a legacy of the AFL & NFL as separate leagues.
Yes, but who cares about the origin of that history? Is the RESULT better?
In baseball, the Mets and Yankees play 6 times.
The Mets & Yankees have division rivals which play 18 times each (NYY-BOS, NYY-BAL, NYM-PHI, NYM-ATL)
Then they have League opponents (7-9 times each)
Then there's teams in the other league they face once every few years.
The number of games doesn't work in hockey. But would the principle?
Would 6 vs geographic rivals OUT OF CONFERENCE, and 6 vs division rivals, and not playing some teams time zones away benefit the sport? Let's say your no longer DIVISION rivals with your most hated enemy. But you're now division rivals with someone a little further away. And you still play your most hated geographic rival.
Aren't there more teams you're fired up to play now?
Interesting idea for discussion sake, but the NHL doesn't have a history of 2 leagues coming together the way that football and baseball do. So it would be a non-starter to split up longstanding divisional rivals into rival conferences/leagues such as the way you have with the Rangers/Islanders, Kings/Ducks, Oilers/Flames, etc.
If anything, it would make more sense for MLB to go the way of the NHL or NBA and have 2 geographic-based conferences with rival teams from the same city or state in the same divisions as each other. Of course, that would be a non-starter too due to the ties between NL or AL teams that sometimes go back a hundred years.
The problems with MLB's alignment is that the season format makes year-long interleague play undesirable.
And that makes a six division of five setup impossible. Hockey does not have that problem.
Why wouldn't a W-C-E in each conference, where West plays West, Cent vs Cent, and East plays East in interleague work?
The main issue is that geography would make something like PHI in the Wales East and PIT in the Campbell Central. But if you could make a configuration around that (or simply add a flex schedule component), I think it'd work just fine.
If you don't like the idea, at least say why.
Personally, I would love a Canadian division. Even more good HNIC double-headers on Saturday nights, and a Canadian regular-season champion every year. And with 2 rounds of divisional playoffs ... thus every year we would have 3 series of Canadian playoffs with a champion and league semi-finalist. It would be HUGE for TV ratings and bragging rights in Canada.
If the league goes to 4 divisions, then a Canadian division would fit nicely right now, with room to add another team in case Phoenix moved to Quebec City (or Ontario).
I have no problem per se with a "Canadian division." My problem is what it means for the other three divisions.
A Canadian Division of VAN, EDM, CAL, WIN, TOR, MON, OTT means three American Divisions:
East: DET, BUF, PIT, BOS, NYR, NYI, NJ, PHI (As a NY, I'm cool with this)
West: SJ, LA, ANA, PHX, COL, MIN, CHI, STL (That's pretty wide-spread)
South: NASH, DAL, TB, FLA, CAR, WASH, CBJ (Egads!)
It basically creates a Southern division. And that is extremely bad for hockey. The attendance of southern market basically confirms that "people from the north migrated to the south; Those people like hockey and will adopt the new local team, and definitely go see that team when their original hometown team comes to town." Which was the entire premise behind why they thought southern hockey would work in the first place.
We've already established that a four-division setup works near-perfect in the West:
One Pacific/Mountain Time Zone division
One Central Time Zone division
And those look remarkably similar to the old Smythe and Norris divisions:
Norris: CHI, STL, MIN (DAL, WIN, NASH replace DET, TOR)
Smythe: VAN, CAL, EDM, LA, SJ (add ANA, COL, PHX)
So why not bring back the Adams and Patrick?
Patrick: NYR, NYI, NJ, PHI, PIT, WASH… add TB and FLA for eight.
Adams: DET, TOR (from Norris), BUF, BOS, MON, OTT.. and add CAR for seven.
Still think it's crazy to put WPG in a division with no other CDN teams. You can slide them in with either the eastern CDN clubs one timezone east, or the western ones two timezones west. Leaving them alone in a crap division like this proposed Central is going to hurt the team.
That would depend on the schedule model. To me, playing everyone in the league twice is stupid (and I live in California now and am ticked off my Islanders don't visit this year). There's little interest in wasting all those home games on teams 2-3 time zones away.
