Re: A few tweaks

Dear NHL Board of Governors,

I doubt that you are very enthused with the ideas that I have suggested to date regarding realignment and revising the schedule. I've been thinking it over, and I think that my ideas are worth a little further revision. Here's my final proposition.

Disband the conferences and get rid of the central division. Put Detroit into the Northeast, Columbus into the Atlantic, Nashville into the Southeast, St. Louis into the Pacific, and Chicago into the Northwest. It might make more sense to move Colorado into the Pacific and St. Louis take its spot in the Northwest. I'll leave that up to you.

To balance the schedule, each team would play the 24 non-divisional teams twice (home and away). That's 48 games. Divisional opponents would play each other 5 times. That's 25 games, total 73. To get us back to a nice round number seeded teams (1 vs 6, 2 vs 5, and 3 vs 4) would play each other one extra time. Seeding would be based on the previous season's standings. Those match-ups would then be split to have 3 home and 3 away. Obviously, the other match-ups would have one team playing 3 at home and 2 on the road. This could be decided on an annual rotation, or by seeding. For example, if the teams were Ottawa and Montreal, on an annual rotation, one year Ottawa would get 3 home games and the next year Montreal. More effectively, I think seeding would be a good way to divide home/away split. First place could have home advantage against teams seeded 2 and 5. Second against 3 and 6, Third against 1 and 5, Fourth against 1 and 2, Fifth against 4 and 6, and Sixth against 3 and 4. Each team would end up with a total of 13 divisional home games and 13 away. To get to our standard 82 game schedule there are 8 games outstanding. These would be made up by playing another home and away series against the team of the same seed from the other divisions.

I know, I know, "What about the playoffs?" Personally, I still like the four pool round robin idea. However, it might be just as easy to split the top 16 teams that qualify geographically East and West. I'm sure you can figure something out.

cheers,
One Hockey Fan