NHL Realignment Project – Week 15

2011/09/07 by 1 Comment

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NHL Realignment Project - Week 15

Triple Threat

Okay, last week we took things to the limit by having 44(!) teams, so this week we pull back. The number of the week is THREE. We’re scuttling the THREE teams that get the most chatter on the internets about being in trouble… The Islanders, The Coyotes and The Blue Jackets.

The thing with this plan is we now have 27 teams… an uneven number. That is true my mathematical mates, but it isn’t a prime number so we can still divide. This week’s plan calls for breaking the NHL into THREE divisions of 9 teams each… No conferences.

In my new NHL Realignment, the top 5 teams in each of the THREE divisions make the playoffs, and the team with the next best record qualifies for the playoffs as a wildcard. Division champs plus next best record are the #1 seeds in a 16-team playoff bracket. The four #1 seeds go through a “draft-and-position” process to build their respective quadrants of the bracket. Woot!

NHL Realignment Map - Week 15

NHL Realignment Map - Week 15

 

Gained teams:

None

Lost teams:

Columbus, Phoenix, New York (Islanders)

Benefits:

• Travel — Minnesota and Winnipeg won’t think so, but there is a better balance of travel than in the current NHL. The Wild and the Jets are playing the role that the Stars currently play as the “WTF is up with our travel” teams… but to be fair, they at least have each other as divisional rivals which isn’t that far to travel. No Eastern Time Zone teams have West Coast Conference rivals (hard to compare completely, since there are no more conferences), but the Red Wings would love this.

• Talent — Less teams (theoretically) mean better hockey. The rosters of the three eliminated teams get pilfered for their best talent, who in turn replace the dregs of the teams that are left. I’m of the mind that there is TONS of talent in this league and that this won’t be as pronounced an influence as proponents of contraction say it will be, but on the other hand, you can’t argue against the fact that A’s and B’s are better than D’s and F’s.

 

(H/T to oilersnation.com for the original map)

 

Until next week!

— TF

Make sure to check out the entire NHL Realignment Project ».

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NHL Realignment Project – Week 10

2011/08/04 by Leave a Comment

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NHL Realignment Project Week 10

Week 10 – A Long Trip Leads to Rivalry Overdose

Couple the New York Islanders continuing drop from legendary, elite team of the past to neglected, passed-by team of the present, with their failure to get a new arena financed, I thinks its time to add the four-time champ to the relocation/realignment mix. Before everyone gets their britches in a bind, yes, I understand that it’s more of an “willingness of the owner” issue, but to counter that argument, I present exhibit A: The Atlanta Thrashers.

So, this week in my fantasy world, I’ve pulled the (for all intents and purposes) arena-less Islanders and taken them all the way across the country to Portland, Oregon. Portland has a more-than-ready area and minimal competition from other sports (the NBA’s Trailblazers and the MLS’s Timbers). In my Foolish Hockey World, teams that leave their current media market, don’t take the franchises history and records with them… so the four Stanley Cup banners stay on Long Island… waiting for a new team to appear (relocate to Long Island and reclaim that glory).

The new-look 30-team NHL looks like this:

NHL Realignment Map Week 10

NHL Realignment Map-Week Ten

 

Gained teams:

Portland

Lost teams:

New York Islanders

Benefits:

• Arena-ready — Portland’s Rose Garden was built in the 1990s and holds 17,000+ for hockey.

• Conference Balance — Each conference has 15 teams (but divisions still have a bit of an imbalance (7 teams or 8 teams).

• New York Eyeballs — With the Rangers and Devils being more successful than the Islanders for the last few decades, the fans in the NYC metro area have leaned away from the Islanders lately. There was already a debate when the Devils came to town that three was too many, but it looks as if the Devils ended up winning the hearts-and-minds tug-of-war to be “The Other NYC Franchise”.

•  Travel Balance — This new alignment has caused several teams (Dallas, Detroit, Columbus) to have to travel less than they currently do for intra-division (and especially in-conference for the Wings and Jackets) games. Conversely it has caused more teams in the East to travel a little more. Sorry, East, but its time to pony up a little bit in the interest of balance.

• Revamped Scheduling/Rivalries — So in an interest to make up for the fact that the Habs/Bruins and Pens/Flyers divisional rivalries, I’ve devised a new scheduling format to allow for TONS of extra games against a traditional rival (kind of a super-charged version of what they do in the Big Ten Conference in football).

- One home-and-away match-up against everyone in the league – 58 games

- One extra home-and-away match-up against every one of the other teams within your division – 14 or 12 games (depending on your division size)… This brings us to 70 or 72 games

- Every team would play 2 more home-and-away series against 2 out-of-conference opponents. The three opponents would rotate out every year (you’d cycle through the 16 teams every 8 years) – 4 games… Bringing us to 74 or 76 games.

- The teams in the 7-team North Division play one extra home-and-away series with one of the other teams the 7-team Central Division. This would be on a rotating basis, so that every seven years it resets… This brings everyone up to 76 games.

- Every team then pairs up with one in-conference arch-rival (e.g. Boston-Montreal, Pittsburgh-Philadelphia) for yet three more home-and-away match-ups. This pairing would be permanent – 6 games… Bringing everyone up to 82 games.

 

(H/T to oilersnation.com for the original map)

 

See everyone next week!

— TF

Make sure to check out the entire NHL Realignment Project ».


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NHL Realignment Project – Week 8

2011/07/19 by Leave a Comment

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NHL Realignment Project — Week Eight

Week 8 – Canadian Madness

This week we mashup the good ol’ Divisional NHL with NCAA Basketball and toss in some Canadian Pride for good measure. The current 30-team NHL sees no relocation, but sees expansion into Quebec City and Hamilton… getting us up to the oft-dreamed-of 9 teams north of the border and even-more-oft-dreamed-of 32-team total scenario. The upper-right of our map is jammed packed now, so let’s see what we can do… Gone is the idea of two geographic Conferences. Again, think NCAA conferences instead. Four of ‘em to be exact.

NHL Realignment Map - Week 8

NHL Realignment Map - Week Eight

Gained teams:

Hamilton, Quebec City

Lost teams:

None

Benefits:

• Canadian Teams Galore — Hamilton and Quebec (re)join the NHL, bringing the number of Canadian teams up to nine.

•  No more Eastern/Western Conferences — It’s no longer about East/West geography. Now we have four Conferences of 8-teams each. 

• Fan-freindly scheduling (with benefits) — You play in EVERY building at least once and every team plays in yours at least once. So every superstar can (barring injury) be seen in every city.

• Rivalry-unfriendly scheduling (with malevolence) — As you’ll see in the playoff formatting, this NHL is about winning your Conference and getting a “Number One Seed” to the playoffs. Teams will play each of their seven in-conference opponents four times per season (2 home, 2 away) and want to kill each other to guarantee a top-seed in the playoffs. Anger-management be damned!

• Slightly shorter regular season — If you’ve done the math from the previous two bullets, that comes out to a 76-game season. That’s less wear and tear on the players (meaning better playoffs), and we get to playoff hockey sooner. Speaking of that, as King of North America, I’m mandating that we start the season a month earlier and end it two months earlier. So we start at the beginning of September and end at the end of March—leaving playoffs for April and May. I’d rather compete for eyeballs against a Sunday-heavy NFL at the beginning of our season than directly with an NBA finals at the end.

• So let’s get to the playoffs already — In lots of sports, finishing in the top three means something special. Win, place, show in horse racing. Gold, Silver, Bronze in the Olympics, Champion, Runner-up, Third-place Winner in World Cups. This version of the NHL will have some of that same mentality… at least when it comes to playoff seeding. Teams finishing first, second or third in each of the four conferences qualify playoffs and are seeded #1, #2 and #3 in their respective “Conference Quadrant” of the playoffs bracket, giving us our first 12 teams. So your main reagular-season goal is to get into and stay in a top-three position in your conference. To change things up from the “good ol’ top-four-teams-in-the-division-make-it-to-the-playoffs” (and to be a little more fair to a really-good-fourth-place-team-in-a-great-conference), the best four teams (regardless of conference) after these initial 12 will qualify as “wildcards”, bringing us to 16.

• To the victor(s) go the spoils — Now, we build the bracket. As the team with the best regular-season record, the winner of the President’s Trophy holds all the cards. The bracket has four Conference Quadrants, each with their #1, #2, and #3 seeds established via regular season records, as discussed in the previous bullet point. Here’s the kicker, though: the President’s Trophy winner gets to layout the bracket. Are the Howe and Gretzky Conferences gonna be on the same side of the bracket, or will it be Gretzky and Hull? Everyone will still have to fight and scratch to make it out of their Conference Quadrant to the Final Four, but at one team will shape that journey more than the others. It’ll be nice to watch a GM be on the spot and make an important choice at a time other than Draft Day, Free-agency Day, or Trade-deadline Day.

• But wait, there’s more — In addition to that great bracket-building power the President’s Trophy winner also picks first which wildcard opponent will round out their quadrant of the bracket. So even more strategy comes into play before the first playoff puck drops. Do you give yourself the weakest opponent? Do you go with the closest geographically to cut down on travel? Does you make a pick that is based on avoiding a “really hot team” that streaked its way into the playoffs on an amazing run? All great questions that will make the selection ceremony that much more interesting. The next best Conference Champ picks his wildcard opponent second and so on until the bracket is set. Again, it’ll be super-interesting to tune in to see what the GMs will do that day.

I know that there are TONS of issues with this realignment map. Such as splitting up Pittsburgh and Philadelphia; Causing lots of extra travel (especially during the playoffs for Wildcard teams); Having a shorter season that makes it nearly impossible to break old records (but c’mon, Gretzky made most of them unbreakable even in a 100-game season). But, whatever! The in-conference intensity, the race for the President’s Trophy and crazy-awesome playoff format (that we get to even earlier) would all make it totally worth it.

(h/t to oilersnation.com for the original map)

Until next week, amigos!

— TF


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NHL Realignment Project – Week 6

2011/07/07 by Leave a Comment

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NHL Realignment Project — Week Six

Week 6 – Get Real, Take Two!

Thanks to a busy holiday weekend (and thinking about last week’s map a bit more), I’ve just tweaked the previous map a bit for NRP Week 6.

Sticking with the geographic names for the four divisions like last week. Unlike the previous edition, we’ve unbalanced the East and West. 16 of the 30 teams are Eastern Conference teams now. Columbus joins the Red Wings over in the East leaving 14 teams in the West. This is a very distinct possibility in the real world. We’ll see if Gary & Co. have the grapes to do this, though. I’d be cool with it.

NHL Realignment Map - Week 6

NHL Realignment Map - Week Six

Gained teams:

None

Lost teams:

None (Now, wouldn’t that be great?)

Benefits:

• Nobody loses their team — The anguish that Quebec, Atlanta and until recently, Winnipeg and Minnesota fans felt are nowhere to be seen in this scenario. Yay!

• Less travel — With teams in three of the four divisions never having to leave their time zone for divisional games (and Mountain-West teams only having to, at most, travel one time-zone over), the frequent flyer miles haven’t seen such little use since the Original Six days.

• Detroit and Columbus outta the West — Wings finally get their long-standing wish. For good measure, Columbus gets their wish too.

• Room for expansion — I know that the NHL says they have no expansion plans for now, but even in this “reality-based scenario”, a healthy  league can easily grow into two more markets and reach the sports-nirvana of 32-teams. This set up of 16 teams in the East bodes well for westward expansion (we’re looking at you Las Vegas, Seattle, Portland, Houston, Kansas City, Salt Lake City). Conversely, this bodes ill for Hamilton and Quebec City… who knows, maybe I’ll have a 36-team league in a future installment, and everyone can be happy!

(h/t to oilersnation.com for the original map)

Hasta la proxima semana!

— TF


 

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NHL Realignment Project – Week 4

2011/06/21 by Leave a Comment

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NHL Realignment Project — Week Four

Week 4 – The Devil You Say!

All apologies to Kevin Smith, but this week, the biggest victims are the New Jersey Devils. The Devils have underachieved in attendance forever, and there are just too many teams in the Greater NYC area. In this make believe world, I could just has easily taken the axe to the Islanders, but let’s say they’ve just signed an agreement to move to the new arena in Brooklyn, so they stay.

I’m sure in a future installment, I’ll move the four-time champs instead of the three time champs.

Anyhoo, I’ll be sticking with the 30-team (with 9 in Canada) set up for this week again. Unlike last week, we’ve kept the sunny states in the mix, though. And GASP… Phoenix has kept their team!

There’s been a little bit of a change in my homage division names. This week, Orr is out and Richard is in, plus there are more divisions, so we’ve added Lemieux and Dionne.

NHL Realignment Map - Week 4

NHL Realignment Map - Week Four

 

Read more of this post »

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NHL Realignment Project – Week 3

2011/06/15 by 1 Comment

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NHL Realignment Project — Week Three

Week 3 – Damn, that’s Cold

Okay, I’m going a bit radical this week. This one is for all those anti-southern city folks.

NOTE: I am not one of the anti-southern city peeps. I live in Texas, after all.

So basically, with this plan, we’ve decided that the NHL hockey is a purely niche sport that has no place in the warmer climates where there isn’t a culture of hockey, or at least a cold enough winter to cultivate one. Niche sport means niche salaries, so some of the smaller market teams could survive with a slightly lower salary cap. My completely arbitrary (other than it is used as a border for quite a few states) line of demarcation is the 37th parallel north. Four former champs (Stars, Hurricanes, Lightning, Ducks) get bounced, not to mention another runner-up (Kings). Damn, that’s cold. Oh well.

Sticking with the current 30-team makeup… just relocating current further north. Also sticking with Week Two’s division names.


NHL Realignment Map - Week 3

NHL Realignment Project — Week Three

Gained teams:

Quebec City, Portland, Sacramento, Kansas City, Seattle, Indiana, Salt Lake, Hamilton

Lost teams:

Dallas, Tampa Bay, Florida, Nashville, Carolina, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Anaheim

Benefits:

Honestly, not all that much. That being said, here we go:

• Easier support for/from youth leagues. — With longer winters (a.k.a. less outdoor sport competition), youth hockey leagues and grassroots interest in the sport can thrive more than in the South.

• More Canadian teams — Hamilton and Quebec City join the league bringing the home of hockey up to 9 teams.

• Interesting(?) new rivalries — Sacramento/San Jose, Portland/Seattle, Seattle/Vancouver, KC/St. Louis, Toronto/Hamilton, Quebec City/Montreal, Salt Lake/Colorado (admittedly inter-divisional)

• More balanced East/West — Decent split geographically, allowing for the Wings and Blue Jackets to be Eastern Time Zone teams in the Eastern Conference. Indiana is (at least a tiny portion) partially in the Central Time Zone… so that’s my excuse for the team in Indianapolis.

Fear not, Texas/Florida/Carolina/SoCal/Tennessee/Arizona folks… a change this drastic can never happen. There are just too many people and money south of the 37th. But don’t get too cozy, Phoenix and Miami, there’s a really good chance you’ll be losing your teams in the next 1-3 years. D’oh! (h/t to oilersnation.com for the original map)

Until next week!

— TF

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NHL Realignment Project – Week 2

2011/06/07 by Leave a Comment

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NHL Realignment Project — Week Two
Week 2 — Phoenix to Seattle

Welcome  back, true believers. Week two is upon us. This week we’ll look at a slightly more plausible scenario for the NHL’s 2012-2013 season. The league stays at the current 30-team count and the only team joining the Winnipeg team in relocation (now with a Jets logo on the map), is the Seattle Coyotes.

Almost everyone seems to agree that the “save” that Glendale/NHL team was able to perform this year is more of a “save with a fat rebound that will be slammed home” next year. So I’m moving ‘em. Just like Week One, the Coyotes are going to Seattle. Hamilton, Quebec, KC and Las Vegas will have to wait (for now).

The 30-team league breaks down into Eastern and Western Conferences again. Each conference has two divisions. I tried labeling the divisions geographically at first, but it didn’t seem right to have Detroit and Columbus in a “Southeast” Division, so I went with (arguably) the biggest names to play for a team in the new divisions… Gretzky, Hull, Orr and Howe. I’ll let sons and fathers argue over which Hull we’re talking about. :)

Seeing how 30 isn’t divisible by 4, and how my number one goal for this realignment was to get all Eastern Time Zone teams into the Eastern Conference I’ve gone with an unbalanced lineup. The two Eastern Divisions each have 8 teams, while the two Western Divisions each have 7 teams. Anyone who doesn’t like this, please refer to my King of North America Defense again.

So after that long intro, here are the goods:

Gained teams:

Seattle

Lost teams:

Phoenix

Benefits:

• Time Zone Harmony — Much to the delight of TV-watching fans, Time Zone insanity has been nearly eliminated. Only three teams have to leave their time zone for divisional road games… and exactly zero teams have to travel more than one time zone away for those same games (again, Dallas and Minnesota, you’re welcome).

• Fairer travel — Extension of the first benefit. Like last week’s plan, this mitigates some of the unfair travel strain placed on teams with the current league lineup. Sure, Western teams will still have to travel more often than their Eastern brothers, but geography and population clusters make a pure balance pretty much impossible. This is better than the current plan.

• New rivalries — Seattle becomes a natural rival for Vancouver. Detroit, Philly and Pittsburgh bring some gravitas to a reasonably young set of teams in the Howe Division… not to mention Penguins developing a thirst for proving to the Wings that Lemieux was snubbed in the division naming process. Dallas and Minnesota get to play more often and hash out their “you stole our team/suck it, we’re better” feud. Throw in a new Jets/Blues/Stars “they mean OUR Hull” rivalry and we’ve got some good stuff.

 

NHL Realignment Map - Week 2

NHL Realignment Project — Week Two

And there you have it. Off to bed (and to ponder next week’s realignment).

— Tom Fulery

 

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