Re-Aligning NHL Divisions

Seattle is going to get an NHL team. It's not official but it is imminent. The leauge has invited the city to apply. When the team begins playing, the NHL needs to have a plan for how its divisions and conferences are going to work. Right now, the map looks like this:

Image from http://www.tomfulery.com/2017/12/15/2017-18-nhl-alignment-map/

Both the Eastern and Western Conferences have two divisions each. All but the Central Division (in red) have 8 teams. However, this map doesn't do the best job illustrating distance between divisional opponents. For that, take a look at the map below.



As both maps clearly illustrate, there is a huge collection of teams in the northeast, a handful throughout the middle of the country, and a cluster on the west coast.  Those spread out throughout the country provide the biggest challenge when it comes to realigning the NHL once Seattle gets a team.

Once Seattle is added, the location of teams will look like this:



With time zones added in:



16 of 32 teams are in Eastern Time Zone. 6 in Central, 4 in Mountain, and 6 in Pacific. This creates a scheduling nightmare, but for my realignment, I'm not focusing on the specifics of scheduling. Instead, I'm going to focus on keeping teams in divisions that make geographical sense and attempt to limit inter-divisional cross timezone games. I'm also throwing rivalries, out of conference games, playoff mechanics, etc. out the window.

With these conditions, there are pair of main layouts.

Four Conference Layout

The first option is a four conference layout. A North (greens),  East (orange/yellow), South (reds), and Western (blues) Conference, each two divisions, with four teams per division. The map below shows this.





With this map six teams would have to travel to another timezone, but that is minimized by the fact that the furthest divisional opponents are only a three hour flight apart (this honor is held by the Arizona Coyotes and St. Louis Blue's).

NFL/NBA Style Layout

The NFL has two conferences, with a North, South, East, and West division in each. Using the map above, you could take a division from each color group and throw them into one conference. This would create two, 16 team conferences, with four, four team divisions in each.

Right now the NHL's East and West Conferences don't work (in the real map) and they wouldn't make much sense in my map either. So what about North and South Conferences? Here's what it might look like:



The Northern Conference is in green and the Southern Conference is in blue.

If we are going all in with the NFL style, the playoffs could work the same. Each division winner gets into the playoffs and two teams with the best records of the remaining 12 get a berth. The top two division winners get a huge advantage (when it comes to hockey) by getting a bye.

My Thoughts

Personally, I prefer the four conference layout. It gives the league more flexibility when it comes to the regular season (how many divisional and conference games) and the playoffs (the amount of teams and how the bracket is structured), it creates and/or reinforces tons of regional rivalries, and simply makes the divisions nicer.

I hope you enjoyed this. It's definitely different than what I normally write about. I am planning on doing one for both MLB and the NBA in the near future. Please let me know what you think, subscribe via email, and share this.


All graphics without a listed source were created by me. 

How the Stanley Cup Playoffs Work

The quest for the Stanley Cup is a four round playoff, with Best of 7 Series going 2-2-1-1-1.

The team with the home-ice advantage always host games 1, 2, 5, and 7, should it get past game 4. The other team hosts games 3, 4, and 6. The home-ice advantage is given to the higher seeded team in the First and Second Rounds. In the Third Round and Finals, it goes to the team with the better record.

In case of a tie during the First and Second Rounds, the first tiebreaker is games won (not including shootouts), the second is points earned in games against each other during the regular season, and the third is the greater differential of goals for and against during the regular season.

Since the NHL's inception there have been numerous playoff formats. The one used today was adopted in 2014, after conference realignment.

This realignment created two conferences (Eastern and Western) with two divisions per. It made sure that when playing divisional games, teams generally stay within their time zone.

Credit for this graphic: https://www.nhl.com/news/guide-to-2013-14-nhl-realignment/c-685005

With this new conference alignment, the playoff structure was altered. As before, 16 teams make the playoffs, 8 from each conference.

The top 3 teams from each division make it into their conference's bracket. The remaining two teams are wild cards. The wild cards are the two remaining teams that scored the most points during the regular season. They can be from either division. So, its possible for one division to have 5 teams, while the other only 3.

The first round of the playoffs works as follows. The team within each conference that scores the most points plays the wild card with the fewest. The other division winner plays the other wild card. The second and third seeds within each division play each other, no mater how many points they scored. This works in both conferences.

Credit: Hayden Goldberg

Next, the winners of each series move to the second round. If you won in the Metropolitan, you play the other Metropolitan winner, and so forth for all divisions. This is essentially the conference semi-final.

Then, the division winners play each other in the conference championship. The winner plays in the Stanley Cup Finals.

Credit: Hayden Goldberg

In the Stanley Cup Finals, the winners of the Eastern and Western Conferences play to win the the NHL Playoffs (better known as the Stanley Cup Playoffs).

Credit: Hayden Goldberg