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. 

The Injury Bug Strikes Again and the Cowboys leave Aaron Rodgers Too Much Time: Events that Sparked My Interest, Week 5

The fifth week of the season is the first week a team can have a bye (save the Buccaneers and Dolphins who had theirs week 1 – this is a whole other issue, see my post on a safer NFL season – due to Hurricane Irma) and one big team had theirs this week – Atlanta. Being a Super Bowl contender, I think that Falcons would much rather have had their bye later in the year in order to get healthy (which again is another issue, see my player safety post). Among the other notable things during Week 5, the Jets have a winning record and are tied for the AFC East lead and Alex Smith the notorious, “game manager,” threw for over 300 yards for the second time this year (third time with 293+ yds). This is the first time in his career he’s eclipsed that amount multiple times in a season.

But, there were two things that really got my attention this week: one quarterback giving another too much time and the injury bug striking again.

Cowboys Give Aaron Rodgers and the Packers Too Much Time

Its common knowledge that if your team is down at the end of the game, your team needs to march down field, score, and take the lead. It’s also common knowledge that if the team that is beating you is the Green Bay Packers, then you need to take as much time off the clock when you go downfield as possible because if given more than about 40 seconds (needing a touchdown to win) or 25 seconds (needing a field goal) Aaron Rodgers will march downfield and win the game for the Packers.

Last week Tom Brady left Cam Newton too much time the end of the game and this week it was Dak Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys who left Rodgers too such. The Cowboys scored a touchdown after a 9 minute drive late in the fourth quarter to lead 31 to 28 and they didn’t leave Rodgers 10 seconds, or 30 seconds, or even a minute to score the overtime forcing three points. Instead, they left him SEVENTY THREE SECONDS. I repeat – 73 seconds! You do not give Aaron Rodgers one minute and 13 seconds to score 3 points at the end of game, let alone with one timeout to stop the clock for the field goal. You just don’t do it. Period. Jerry Jones was right when he said the team left Rodgers too much time because he is right.

The Cowboys could easily have won this game but they threw it away and it could end up costing them when it comes to playoff seeding in December.

Giants and Texans Seasons Take Hits with Key Injuries

Lets start with the Giants, who coming into Week 5 were already 0-4 and playing another 0-4 team - the Chargers - in a game that would have serious implications to who receives the number one pick in the draft. The Giants lost, but worse things happened. On the same drive, Wide Receivers Brandon Marshall (#2 on Depth Chart) and Sterling Shepard (#3) exited the game with ankle injuries. Then Dwayne Harris fractured his foot (#4 on chart). In the fourth quarter, Wide Receiver Odell Beckham Jr. (#1 on chart) was carted off the field with a gruesome ankle injury. The giants top 4, count'em 4 wide receivers were injured in one game, three of whom left due to an ankle injury. Shepard is the only one who isn't out for the year. 

For some reason the loss of 4 of the 5 receiver on the Giants roster hasn't deterred quarterback Eli Manning who is still optimistic about the season.

Sadly, the Giants weren't the only team to get hit by the injury bug in Week 5. J.J. Watt, who is more than a star athlete to the people of Houston, Texas suffered a devastating injury in the Sunday Night Football game against the Chiefs and is out for the season.

On Monday he tweeted, "I can't sugarcoat is, I am devastated. All I want to do is be out there on that field for my teammates and this city. I'm sorry." 

Out of everyone in the world, Watt has the least to be sorry and his tweet demonstrates how much he means to the people of Houston. He was already a folk hero in Houston but after raising some $37 million for the victims of Hurricane Harvey, his meaning to the city rose even more.

The NFL needs to change the way it's season is scheduled because, among other things, this is the second season in a row where his season has ended prematurely. Cliff Avril's career is in doubt after an injury he suffered two weeks ago, one of the NFL's best receivers is out for the year. The  NFL has multiple options for what they can do, but you can check out my thoughts here.

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Making the NFL Season Safer

The NFL is a very dangerous and physically demanding sport. Injuries like torn hamstrings and knee ligaments are commonplace. Thursday Night Football isn’t popular among players because of rest issues. Richard Sherman outlined that last year in an article for The Players Tribune. So, by adding more time for players to recover would be something that the players would surely rejoice in having. It would provide a wide array of benefits, and not just for the players; the league and its fans would reap from it.

How could this be accomplished? Well, the league could start by adding in another bye week for teams, making the season 18 weeks. Of course, this is in a perfect would where collective bargaining doesn’t exist. In this new schedule, the regular season lasts 18 weeks with every team getting two bye weeks and the Pro Bowl is scrapped because players aren’t a fan if it in order to make sure the Super Bowl is the first Sunday of February.

This means that there is no longer a gap between the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl. To make sure it stays, the NFL can play the Hall of Fame Game the Saturday the rest of the NFL plays their first pre-season game, which would occur the next day. Alternatively, all teams play the weekend of the Hall of Fame game, and the regular season starts a week earlier, meaning the Post Season schedule remains as is today. Or, finally, they could simply scrap the final week of the Pre-Season.

Again, this is in a scenario where the idea of collective bargaining doesn’t exist, but it does meaning the league would have to get something out of it or the players would have to give something. Something big because it means less teams are playing each weekend, hence fewer games being played, meaning less money, all in addition to the fact that they no longer have the Pro Bowl.

By adding in another bye week, players are more rested coming into the end of the season. This means, among other things, players would have the ability to put more effort in and the risk of injury goes down. The latter has other benefits too, as the risk of injuries that cause players to miss the postseason or the start of the next season goes down, more people are inclined to tune into or come to a game. It also means fewer Derek Carr type injuries where a Super Bowl contender (who already qualified for the playoffs) falls flat on their faces in the Post Season due to a big injury. This leads more interesting matchups, higher TV ratings, and in general, a more interesting Post Season.

For me at least – but presumably lots of others – I didn’t watch much of the AFC Post Season in January because the path to the Super Bowl was wide open for the Patriots. When Carr got hurt, it immediately squashed the Raiders chances of upsetting the Patriots, already the clear favorite in the weak conference. In addition to Raiders, the Texans were without a quarterback. By having star players injured for the post season, fan interest goes down exponentially.

A final benefit to the league gets by adding in a second bye week: career ending injuries at the end of the season go down. No one wants to see a player have their career ended by force, let alone a really bad injury. As a fan, I would much rather see a player retire because of family, they are just done with the sport, or some other personal reason, and not because they are forced out. While all end of season injuries many not be career ending, but they can really hamper a player until they get forced out or their play drops of a cliff. Look what happened to Peyton Manning.

Even if harmful injuries don’t happen at the end of the season, by giving players more rest during the season, the NFL is not only helping themselves in terms of fan interest, they are aiding players morally and physically. Football is a very dangerous sport, and the NFL doesn’t want to be known as an employer who makes their employees jobs even more dangerous. 

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