On realignment (the part that doesn't suck)

In line with today's announcement that the NHL's Board of Governors has approved a crazy new realignment of the NHL, here begins a 2-part (probably) discussion of why I don't hate it and why I hate it.

In this piece, let's talk about the actual alignment of teams, which is the part I don't hate. Of course, the current alignment suffered some problems recently, as the Jets now find themselves on jets a little too often. As Gary Bettman said, "I had nothing against the existing format, and but for the move to Winnipeg we wouldn't be looking to change it."

But, of course, as long as we have to realign something, why not change everything? Of note: if Winnipeg's presence in the Southeast Division were the only problem, this would have been easy. Move them to the Northwest, with their Canadian neighbors Calgary and Edmonton (I know they're not really neighbors, but that's what happens when you move to Manitoba - you have no neighbors). Move Minnesota out of the Northwest and into the Central (St. Paul is 680 miles from Detroit, 1800 miles from Vancouver). That leaves Nashville to move out of the Central and into the Southeast. Hooray.

But the NHL was right in assessing that this is an opportunity to shake things up in a more major way. Plenty of teams are unhappy about their travel and game schedule, time zones are a bitch, and so on. This is a good chance to try and fix that. And so the NHL totally realigned things, splitting teams up by time zone.

Pacific: Vancouver, San Jose, Los Angeles, Anaheim
Mountain: Edmonton, Calgary, Colorado, Phoenix
Central: Winnipeg, Minnesota, Detroit, Chicago, Columbus, St. Louis, Nashville, Dallas
Eastern: Montreal, Ottawa, Boston, Toronto, Buffalo, Long Island, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington, Carolina, Tampa Bay, Florida

OK, so that's a bit off. But when you combine Pacific and Mountain time zones into one, and you split the Eastern into 2, you get 2 divisions with 8 teams each and 2 divisions with 7 teams each. That's a pretty good call, and it's exactly what they did. The only "interesting" part is how to split the Eastern time zone. Which, of course, the NHL did differently than I would have. Here's what they did:

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Montreal, Ottawa, Boston, Toronto, Buffalo, Tampa Bay, Florida
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Long Island, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington, Carolina
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The goal, clearly, was to keep together the current insane Atlantic division, but also to put Pittsburgh back with Washington. That's fine, but I would have traded the Pens, Caps, and Canes for the Bs, Habs, and Sens, creating a more logical geographic divide:

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Montreal, Ottawa, Boston, Long Island, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia
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Toronto, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Washington, Carolina, Tampa Bay, Florida
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Makes sense, no? Keeps your Crosby-Ovechkin thing alive, reunites the Rangers (who come with their two irritating younger brothers) with old friends Boston and Montreal, corresponds to logical geography at all? But instead we get the "New York Market Plus Teams The NHL Likes" division and the "Northeast Canada Plus Florida" division. And so:

Frequent Flier Conference: Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Colorado, San Jose, Los Angeles, Anaheim, Phoenix
Flyover Conference: Winnipeg, Minnesota, Detroit, Chicago, Columbus, St. Louis, Nashville, Dallas
What's Florida Doing Here Conference: Montreal, Ottawa, Boston, Toronto, Buffalo, Tampa Bay, Florida
NBC Conference: Long Island, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington, Carolina

But this isn't really the point. While my proposal certainly makes more sense, theirs isn't entirely terrible - it's a 3-team trade away from mine. And it solves a ton of problems: teams will be playing teams in their time zones a lot more often, thus scheduling games at reasonable hours, which will allow people to actually watch their games. Generally, getting people to watch games is good for a league. So I'm mostly on board with the actual geographic recategorizing.

And, for those of you feeling nostalgic, other than Toronto and Winnipeg, this is almost as close as we could get to the divisions from the 80s and 90s. If you ignore expansion teams and lost teams since then, the Frequent Flier Conference is the Smythe Division minus the Jets, the Flyover Conference is the Norris Division plus the Jets and minus the Leafs, the What's Florida Doing Here Conference is the Adams Division plus the Leafs, and the NBC Conference is the Patrick Division.

So I'd prefer my division of the Eastern time zone to the NHL's, but these time zone lines are generally a good idea. So why am I complaining? I was gonna tell you, but I'm afraid I sometimes make posts way too long. So I'm stopping here, and I'll tell you all the reasons I don't like it next post, which will be up at some point in the future.