Hijinks, Ballyhoo, Shenanigans and Tom Fulery
2011/11/10 3 Comments
Bleacher Report’s Russell Francis has begun his own NHL realignment fun…
Havalook: NHL Realignment: Outside the Box Possibilities Part I North-South Conferences | Bleacher Report.
2011/11/06 5 Comments
Oh Six!
This week on the NHL Realignment Project we are finally getting around to creating a scenario where the Original Six get their own division. To get this to work out in a more manageable way, we had to do a major contraction of the NHL… down to 24 teams. It was either this or go up to 36 (can you say, “Week 25 foreshadowing?”).
So our new 24-team NHL has four conferences… Original Six, Gretzky, Lemieux and Hull. Each conference would qualify four teams for the playoffs, play down to a conference champion… then we would have a “Final Four” league semi-final where the team with the best regular season record of the four left standing would choose its opponent.
The Map:
NHL Realignment Map - Week 24
The Breakdown:
Original Six Conference: Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Montreal, New York, Toronto
Lemieux Conference: Carolina, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, Washington
Hull Conference: Buffalo, Dallas, Minnesota, Ottawa, St. Louis, Winnipeg
Gretzky Conference: Calgary, Colorado, Edmonton, Los Angeles, San Jose, Vancouver
Gained teams:
none
Lost teams:
Anaheim, Columbus, Florida, Nashville, New York Islanders, Phoenix
The Benefits:
• Tradition — The Original Six finally gets the recognition they deserve with their own conference. Major rivalries such as PIT/PHI, LAK/SJ, EDM/CGY to name a few have been maintained in-conference.
• Travel — Conferences span no more than two time-zones. Eastern and Central Time Zone teams have a minimized slate of games starting super-late because of Pacific Time Zone locations… the same goes for Pacific and Mountain Time Zone teams playing super-early because of Eastern Time Zone locations.
• Talent — Killing off six teams will result in a major uptick in talent level as the surveying teams split the spoils. Ponder and love on this: the term “Top 9 Forward” will come in to use!
Scheduling Notes:
36 outside conference (1 home/1 away vs each of the 18 opponents)
40 in-conference (4 home/4 away vs. each of the 5 opponents)
6 extra games outside conference (1 home/1 away vs 3 teams in another conference… to rotate through all 18 non-conference opponents every 6 six years)
See you next Sunday!
— TF
2011/11/04 Leave a Comment
Week 2: The Great Expansion: The Ultimate Risk that Changed the NHL Forever
Here’s the second entry to our new feature… picking a random interesting-looking hockey book every Friday. Some of them will be ones I’ve read, but most will be ones I hope to read someday, whenever the time-demons decide to give me some of my life back.
Enjoy…
| Via Amazon:
The Great Expansion: The Ultimate Risk that Changed the NHL Forever It was March 1965 when Clarence Campbell, president of the National Hockey League, emerged from a long board meeting and announced that the NHL would double in size beginning with the 1967-68 season. Fans loyal to the “Original Six” were furious. Owners were irate. In The Great Expansion: The Ultimate Risk that Changed the NHL Forever, hockey expert Alan Bass profiles the power brokers and provides an in-depth study of the decision and its revolutionary impact on the game. |
2011/10/30 Leave a Comment
Nationalism, Expanded
Week twenty-three in the NHL Realignment Project is a larger variation on the theme established last week:
I took the two (present-day) countries from each continent that have provided us our leading scorers… Canada/US and Czech Republic/Slovakia. The divisions are named after each of those nation’s leading scorer… Wayne Gretzky, Mike Modano, Jaromir Jagr and Stan Mikita.
We’re going the the same “horizontal divisions” concept, but with four additional teams. The Islanders and Coyotes are back after being dropped last week, and Portland and Quebec City get teams too, bringing us to a 32-team NHL. We divvy up into four divisions of eight teams each… one of which is an all-Canadian affair.
The Map:
NHL Realignment Map - Week 23
The Breakdown:
Northern Conference
- Gretzky Division: Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg
- Mikita Division: Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Minnesota, New Jersey, NY Islanders, NY Rangers, Portland
Southern Conference
- Jagr Division: Colorado, Columbus, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Jose, St. Louis, Washington
- Modano Division: Anaheim, Carolina, Dallas, Florida, Los Angeles, Nashville, Phoenix, Tampa Bay
Gained teams:
Portland, Quebec
Lost teams:
none
The Benefits (lots of repetition from last week):
• Respect — Hockey is a global game… and stars from various countries have made the game grow at home and abroad. With these division names, we do a major hat tip to that.
• Division Pride — Having a division that is “Canada-only”, one that is “all-South”, one that has three of the Original Six, and one that has the leagues two biggest stars (not to mention the most cup-hungry fans (San Jose)) will give each division its own unique brand and identity. The rivalries within each, and the pride across each would be an interesting dynamic to watch.
• Rivalries — I did my best to keep some great rivalries intact. PIT/PHI, NYR/BOS, TOR/MTL, CGY/EDM, ANA/LAK to name a few. I’d build a non-division schedule where everyone played everyone else at least once at home and once away… that way other big rivalries can still live on as well.
• Travel — All four of the divisions have coast-to-coast representation. So everyone is gonna have to travel a bunch.
• Modano Retirement — Since Modo recently retired, I felt it appropriate to hit him up with a shoutout… thanks for making hockey work in Texas… thanks for being a class act… thanks for inspiring us, Mike.
See you next Sunday!
— TF
2011/08/31 4 Comments
The Mother Lode!
Okay, last week was a little out of control with 37 teams… so this week I’ve decided to UP IT EVEN MORE! I’ve taken Week 13′s concept of every city that ever lost a team got one back and have piled on seven more cities I’ve deemed “deserving”.
The reason I went seven was to get us up to a number of teams (44) that was divisible by four (but not eight or six)… getting us to the fashionable four-division breakdown. Two conferences, each made up of two divisions of 11 teams each. Top four teams in each division make the playoffs.
So how did I determine which cities were deserving? I started with adding I basically looked at Wikipedia’s list of largest North American Metro Areas and took the four largest North American metro areas that already have AHL teams. Turns out they all ended up being American. The AHL is basically non-existent in the west, so I then added Seattle, Portland and Las Vegas to help balance things out.
NHL Realignment Map - Week 14
Gained teams:
Oakland, Kansas City, Quebec City, Atlanta, Hamilton, Hartford, Cleveland, Seattle, Portland, Houston, San Antonio, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Norfolk/Virginia Beach
Lost teams:
None
Benefits:
• Full Coverage — Every hockey city that ever was, is on this map. The big cities out west join the club. Proven (and large enough) AHL cities come on board too. SO MUCH HOCKEY!
• Rivalries — Tons of existing and soon-to-be-awesom rivalries are built in. For those of you in Pennsylvania, you’re in-state rivalry has been left intact (unlike the last few weeks). The Texas-trio of DFW, H-Town, and the Alamo city would be intriguing. Seattle/Portland/Vancouver too…. and Oakland/San Jose, Chicago/Milwaukee, Montreal/Quebec, Norfolk/Carolina… to name a few.
See everyone next week!
— TF
2011/08/22 1 Comment
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?
See everyone next week!
— TF
2011/08/14 3 Comments
Week 11 – Take me out to the ballgame… err, puck match? (The MLB Map)
This week, we go wacky again. This map is inspired by Major League Baseball’s alignment. With that in mind, we divide our NHL into two leagues (Campbell and Wales) each of which is divided into East, Central, and West divisions.
NHL Realignment Map-Week Eleven
Gained teams:
None
Lost teams:
None
Benefits:
• Travel — Pretty equitable travel across the league.
That’s about it. It’s mostly all negatives in my opinion. Almost all current divisional rivalries are lost. This was more of an experiment than a realistic solution.
See everyone next week!
— TF
2011/08/04 Leave a Comment
Not sure what it means or how it helps, but we have a fan page on Facebook. Hooray!
— TF
2011/08/01 Leave a Comment
Week 9 – Barbecue and Desert
I bet you read “dessert” just now. As nice as that sounds, we’re talking desert, as in dry heat. This week, not only do we not lose the Phoenix Coyotes (hey, if Congress can come up with a deal, why not the City of Glendale?), but we add the Las Vegas Scorpions (or some other, more creative mascot). Sorry, Canada… no Quebec, Hamilton, Saskatoon, Regina, Yellow Knife or Moose Jaw teams this week.
NHL Realignment Map-Week Nine
Gained teams:
Kansas City, Las Vegas
Lost teams:
None
Benefits:
• Arena-ready — Kansas City is already there.
• Publicity-ready — Vegas is already there.
• Balance, balance, balance — Both conferences have the same number of teams. Each division has an equal number of teams. Magic!
• Our old friend, “less travel” is back — Every team in the Eastern Conference is from the Eastern Time Zone. The teams in the Western Conference never have to travel two time zones for an intra-divisional game. And of course, Detroit (and Columbus) are outta the west now.
New update later this week (since this one was a few days late)!
— TF
