NHL Realignment Project – Week 13
2011/08/22 2 Comments
Week 13 – There and Back Again
Who says you can’t make all the people happy all the time. In this week’s edition of the NHL Realignment Project, every city that ever lost a team (and currently doesn’t have one), get’s one back. This generosity yields a 37-team league. This number (and the geographic groupings) causes some awkwardness as far as division goes, so we’ve scraped the idea of divisions altogether and gone with four Conferences (three 9-team conference, and one 10-team conference).
Like in Week 8, the top four teams in each conference qualify for the playoff tournament, and my awesome invention is back… the team that wins the President’s Trophy (best regular-season record), get’s to decide which conferences will be in each quadrant of the bracket.
NHL Realignment Map - Week Thirteen
Gained teams:
Oakland, Kansas City, Quebec City, Atlanta, Hamilton, Hartford, Cleveland
Lost teams:
None
Benefits:
• Happiness — Every hockey city that ever was, is on this map. No more complaining about the “team that was stolen from us”. Hooray! (NOTE: Yes, I know that there was a “Brooklyn Americans”, but they never actually played in Brooklyn (just in Manhattan), so I opted to let them go the way of the Colorado Rockies and let the current team in the city be the representative of the past as well).
• Clusterific — Other than Columbus, there are reasonable clumpings of cities that happens ont this map. The conferences take advantage of that. Travel stays reasonably under control and lots of geographic rivalries can develop.
• The More the Merrier — 37 teams is a bunch. More hockey equals more awesome, right?
(H/T to oilersnation.com for the original map)
See everyone next week!
— TF
Pingback: » NHL Realignment Project – Week 14 Tom Fulery – Uselessness at its finest.
Great idea. But I would have 36 teams. Seattle, Utah or Las Vegas, Wisconsin, Toronto, Quebec, Atlanta, and Kansas City or Houston. One of the teams would be a relo from Phoenix. All the teams here would have NHL type arenas already. The most interesting add is Wisconsin. It is a hockey mad state and would be a great rivalry for Chicago, Detroit, and Minnesota. I would put those four teams plus the new Toronto team, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Dallas in the same division. Depending on which city gets the Coyotes, Denver or Winnepeg could stay or go further West. This puts Hawks – Wings back together without Detroit going too far West. The other possibility is to have the Maple Leafs instead of the Legacy in that division as a traditional Detroit rivalry from the original six.
As far as the other rejected teams, I think CBJ makes up for the Cleveland loss. If there is too much heartburn about a third try for hockey with the ATL, then Hartford should get the franchise (I miss the Whalers theme song). Utah and Seattle make geographic sense and have population to support. Houston should
be able to support hockey, but I don’t think of
it as a hockey town. A couple of dark horses could be OKC or MEM because they have NBA arenas. Forget Oakland – San Jose has the Bay Area franchise and even though there’s going to be a new arena in SF, Sharks own the rights. Sacramento and/or Portland could be very dark horse options for Pacific Coast balance as they also are NBA cities.