Friday, December 22, 2006

NHL Is Looking To Re-Re-Align

The NHL realigned into the 6-division format when they added several teams in the late 1990s.  Now they want to go back.

The NHL is strongly considering realigning back to the 4-division league they were before the change in the late 1990s.  The reasons are based on keeping teams in their time zones and keep travel costs down.

Each conference would have a 7-team division and an 8-team division.  The alignment may look something like this:

NORTHEAST:  Boston, Buffalo, Montreal, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Washington
ATLANTIC:  Atlanta, Carolina, Florida, New Jersey, NY Islanders, NY Rangers, Philadelphia, Tampa Bay
CENTRAL:  Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Minnesota, Nashville, St Louis
PACIFIC:  Anaheim, Calgary, Colorado, Edmonton, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Jose, Vancouver 

The benefactors of this would clearly be teams like Dallas [who currently has to play their division road games in the Pacific times zone] and Minnesota [who has most of their games in the Mountain or Pacific time zone]. 

 

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