How NHL Realignment Should Be Done

Ever since the Atlanta Thrashers became yet another one of commissioner Gary Bettman's failures a couple years ago and moved to Winnipeg, there's been a bit of a problem. The NHL never bothered to realign the conferences/divisions, and as a result, the Winnipeg Jets (located up in there Canada eh) have been playing in the Thrashers' old Southeast division with the likes of the Florida Panthers. Think for a moment about how idiotic that is. The Winnipeg Jets have been playing in the same division as the Florida Panthers for two seasons. In a league where the divisions are geographically organized, this makes no sense. Let me give you a list of all the NHL teams that are in closer proximity to the Jets than the Panthers are:

• All of them

"I got 99 problems, and misplaced teams are 30 of them."

It's pretty evident that the NHL needs to do something, and in fact, they are! Talks have begun over the last couple days, and the NHL anticipates having a realignment plan in place over the next few weeks. Yeah, they said that about the CBA too..

Actually, the NHL presented a realignment proposal a little over a year ago that was rejected by the Players Association on the basis that it made no sense. Since then, the topic hasn't been brought up again, until a few days ago. The problem with the old proposal was not the league's lack of good ideas, but the horrible execution of those ideas. See, the NHL had proposed a four-conference alignment with a whole new playoff format. The good ideas here are the time-zone friendly alignment, which has potential to embrace current rivalries and breed new ones. The bad execution of those ideas are a questionable playoff format, a poorly structured regular season schedule, and the fact that the two Florida teams play in the same division as the Bruins, Canadiens, Sabres, Maple Leafs, and Senators. I thought the point of realignment was to make the divisions more geographically sound, not screw them up even more. Below is the NHL's proposal.

Why in the world are Tampa and Florida in that division? Whenever the line connecting
divisional teams has to dodge other teams (Toronto to Tampa), there's clearly a problem.

Aside from the obvious geographic problem above, there remains problems with the regular season scheduling. Basically, since some conferences have 7 teams and some have 8, the only way to have a "fair" schedule (same amount of in-conference games for each team) is for every team to have to play 86 games rather than the standard 82. And it's a pain in the bum trying to do the math to figure how they came up with it. The day the ridiculous scheduling format is put into place is the day I take the time to actually explain it. But no matter how you slice it, there's no way to divide 30 teams up evenly amongst 4 conferences. Inevitably, the regular season schedule format is going to be confusing should the NHL choose to take the 4 conference route, which I'm actually in favor of. Another issue is the NHL proposes that the top 4 teams from each conference qualify for the playoffs, and the match-ups are 1v4 and 2v3 in all 4 conferences. Eventually, you have 4 conference champions who are then seeded and battle for the Stanley Cup. The problems with this are that all the conference rivalries will be done by the end of the second round, and conferences that have a lot of top teams one year will see some of the better teams in the league eliminated more quickly. 

Now, I like the four conference idea, however, I prefer them to be called divisions. I still think two of the divisions should be considered the "Eastern Conference" and two considered the "Western Conference", for playoff purposes. I'm going to present my alignment idea for the 30 team league we have today, and I'll likely do another post in the near future covering relocation of teams and expansion of the league, which will include a new realignment plan. But for now, here's the current 30 teams:

Basically, this is the most time-zone friendly and geographically sensible alignment.Yes, I realize the Pittsburgh Penguins are not in the same division as any of their rivals, and no, I don't care. The division they'd like to be in already has 8 teams, and the only solution is a drastic change in the alignment. Which, to be honest, is probably how the NHL arrived at their stupid "Florida in the Northeast" idea. I don't pander to the Penguins like the NHL does, and this is how the alignment should look. Besides, it's not like Pittsburgh will never play the Flyers and Capitals again. Plus, what's wrong with a Pittsburgh-Detroit rivalry? Didn't they play each other in the Stanley Cup finals two years in a row not too long ago? Or a Pittsburgh-Buffalo rivalry? Didn't they play each other in the first winter classic back when the NHL didn't make it a habit of cancelling their marquee events? So to everyone bitching that the Penguins aren't getting what they want, pipe down. Pittsburgh should have never been in the "Atlantic" division in the first place. 

Regular season: I offer a slightly simpler solution than the NHL, but still unavoidably confusing:

• 7 team divisions:
• 6 games against division teams (6 teams*6 games=36 games)
• 2 games against all non-division teams (23 teams*2 games=46 games)
• 36 games+46 games=82 games.
• 8 team divisions:
• 5 games against division teams (7 teams*5games=35 games)
• 2 games against all non-division teams (22 teams*2games=44 games)
• 35 games+44 games=79 games
• An extra game will be played against 3 division teams, rotating yearly, for a total of 82 games.

Playoffs:

• Top 4 teams in each division qualify (8 from East, 8 from West). Those 8 teams are then seeded 1-8, and the playoff structure as we know it commences. 
• This allows for a wider range of playoff match-ups, as well as the possibility of two rival teams playing for the chance to go to the Cup Finals (Devils-Rangers last season, which wouldn't be possible under the NHL's proposed playoff format). 

This is the unequivocally best way to go about the realignment process. It builds on the NHL's four conference/division idea, while actually executing it in a way that makes sense and doesn't damage the integrity of the game. There's going to be a lot of realignment news over the next couple weeks, because it seems they're really pushing it now. Expect whatever the league settles on to go into effect for the 13-14 season, because I can't imagine the Jets playing in the Southeast division for another season. It seems a bit complicated at first, and there's a lot of consideration to be put into realigning a national sports league, but I believe this is the most efficient way to go about it. 

Or, maybe they'll just keep 6 divisions and move Detroit to the Eastern Conference.

Who says realignment is complicated?

Photo credits: blogs.edmontonjournal.com, tomfulery.com, bleacherreport.com

NHL Lockout Update: Going to Court

Well, it finally happened. The NHL and NHLPA are going to court. Here's a breakdown of the events of the last few days:

- The NHLPA decided to have the players vote on whether or not to dissolve the union. Two-thirds of the players must vote in favor of filing a disclaimer of interest, which would dissolve the union. Should the vote pass, the union would have until January 2 to actually go through with filing the disclaimer of interest. If they do, the players would be open to file anti-trust lawsuits against the league. Voting started today, and for some reason ends on Thursday. No rush, the season isn't in jeopardy or anything.

-The NHL, anticipating this move by the union, filed a class-action complaint, which asks the federal courts to affirm the legality of the lockout. This would protect the league from anti-trust lawsuits should the players vote for a disclaimer of interest.

-NHLPA released a statement in which they say the league is over stepping their bounds by attempting to take away the players right to decide whether or not to be represented by a union. The league's argument, stated in their 43 page complaint to the courts, is that the players are only seeking a disclaimer of interest as a negotiating tactic, with the intention of "extracting more favorable terms and conditions of employment."

There are a lot of possible outcomes to this, and rather than explaining it all in a long, confusing paragraph, I decided to just make a flowchart. I like flowcharts.

Click image to enlarge.

As you can see from the flowchart above, no one knows what the hell is going to happen. There are so many possible scenarios that it's impossible to predict at this point. These negotiations have a tendency to take completely unexpected turns, so expect the final outcome to look nothing like any of the paths on the chart above.

You'll notice the colors that I used in my chart are consistent with the holiday season. Merry Christmas, hockey's screwed!

Photo credits: picasawebs.google.com

NHL Lockout Update: Bettman Is To Blame

Wow, eighty-four days, eh? If you're like me, you miss hockey a lot. And by a lot, I definitely mean more than this:

Bettman in 2008, presumably describing how much
money the Thrashers made that year.

For those of you a little behind on the current lockout news, here's the skinny:
The two sides met on Tuesday and Wednesday, with both meetings lasting until almost 1:00am. The idea behind this series of meetings is that it was to be players and owners only. No Bettman, no Daly, no Fehr brothers. Apparently, the meetings on Tuesday were great, and heaps of progress was made. That means Wednesday can only get better, right?

Wrong. Word is that Bettman and the owners proposed a deal to the union, and the union retreated to review it in brief detail. Hmm.. brief detail? Oxymoron? Anyway, the players returned to the owners by saying that their (the owners) increased concession in the 'make whole' area was a start. This statement, for some ridiculous reason, set the owners off. They believe that their added $89 million to the players was an incredibly noble and honorable sacrifice, and they were insulted when the players didn't fall to their knees and kiss their feet and worship the glorious ground they walk upon. Apparently the owners believe their shit don't stink, and the only reason they offered the union more money is so players could buy peach-blossom flavored air fresheners for their less-worthy player shit.

Gary Bettman, flanked by morons.

Give me a break owners. You're insulted that the players said your 'make whole' concession was just a start, meanwhile, the concept behind the 'make whole' idea is to make the players whole for the millions of dollars you're unfairly taking away from them. Should they not be insulted? And why is this even an issue? It should be non-negotiable. If the amount to give the players to make them whole is being negotiated over, obviously it isn't making them whole, now is it? There's only one number that makes the players whole, so it seems pretty silly for the owners to crack the shits over the players assuming that the word "whole" means "whole". Seems like the owners side is filled with lots of oxymorons, minus the oxy. Oh well, can't get much worse on Thursday, right?

Wrong. See, Bettman's 'proposal' was more of an ultimatum, no negotiating involved at all. The owners noble concession on the 'make whole' ridiculousness and their decision to stop pursuing to change the free agency rights was contingent on the fact that the union agree to three things:
-5 year individual contract length (7 for re-signings).
-No escrow caps or compliance buyouts.
-10 year CBA length.

Gary Bettman thinking.

Negotiatingly, in true negotiating form, the players then negotiated a negotiating negotion. Gary Bettman, however, wasn't having any of it. After seeing that the players had proposed an 8 year CBA length and 8 year maximum individual contract length, he had his pocket-holder Bill Daly leave the union a voicemail to let them know that their counter-proposal was unacceptable, that they weren't interested in further talks, and that their proposal was off the table. Well gee, Gary, you don't suppose you could have NEGOTIATED? Instead, he rejected the proposal without giving it more than ten minutes of thought, which is becoming a recurring trend. Thinking doesn't seem to be one of Gary's strong suits these days.


After Daly's middle-school-esque voicemail move, Don Fehr took to the podium and regretfully informed the media of the bad news. It was clear he was almost at a loss for words. This came just minutes after he had addressed the media to tell them of the good progress being made and the small gap that remains. Obviously, that gap is a lot bigger than he perceived. Just as the shocked media was preparing to pack it up for the day, word came down that Bettman and Daly were on their way to the podium. The two arrived, and Bettman spent nearly 45 minutes explaining every aspect of the negotiations to the media; an action he has condemned since the talks began in August. In the epitome of his hyprocricy, Bettman held nothing back. Daly chipped in here and there, but just spend most of the time holding Bettman's pocket and looking like a fat version of that guy from The Shield. Afterwards, they left the stand, and that's all she wrote. For now.

The media captured a picture of Bettman and Daly leaving their hotel bathroom late at night.

Photo credits courtesy of Getty Images/Jim McIssac, Associated Press, Reuters/Mike Blake, Prison Break