Faceoff: Should the NHL consider realigning its 30 teams? – ESPN

Faceoff: Should the NHL consider realigning its 30 teams? – ESPN:


The assumption has long been if the NHL ever gets to a point where it is serious about realigning the conferences, the first order of business will be to move Detroit into the Eastern Conference, which would set up some interesting rivalry possibilities with Toronto, Buffalo and Ottawa.

LeBrun: Scotty, I wouldn’t be so sure about moving Detroit. I think Chicago, among others, would have serious issues with that. While I agree it’s never made any sense to have the Wings in the Western Conference, the Original Six tie to the Blackhawks would be tough to break up.

Speaking as a Western Conference fan (and someone who lives on the West Coast), the thought that the NHL would take a FIFTH original six and stick it back in the west honestly pisses me off.

One of the consistent criticisms of the NHL is that it’s never broken out of it’s “traditional” markets in the US (this despite 99% ticket sales in San Jose, strong support in Dallas, Good attendance in Anaheim/LA (just not both at once), Stanley Cups in Colorado, etc…).

And yet then people pressure the league to “stack the good stuff” in the east. Put Detroit in the East. Let’s do an unbalanced schedule, so those poor eastern teams don’t have to travel so much. If it’s not Canada and the Northeast, well, let it fend for itself. Here in San Jose, we didn’t see the Maple leafs for something like six years because of the way the schedules were done, first to allow Canadian teams to play each other more often, then for the unbalanced schedule. At least now, those of us out west will see the original six every other year.

So what message would putting Detroit back in the east send to the western conference? Yeah, that the league really IS a parochial, regional league and only Canada and the Northeast region matters. Those of us who live elsewhere who are strong fans of the league love listening to the Toronto and New York media push that agenda, too.

If you really want to grow the league into a national presence, you don’t do it by retreating from your non-core markets. You do it by investing in them and nurturing them. If the western teams don’t get to see the major crowd-drawing teams more than every fifth year, how exactly are you supporting the growth of the league out west?

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  • Josh

    @Joe: The problem with using time zone as a basis, is that the league has 30 teams, of which 18 are in eastern time. That means three of them have to be in the western conference, unless you want 18 and 12 for conferences, someone has to play in the west. Currently that is Minnesota, Columbus, and Detroit.
    What they should do is align like baseball, with geographic divisions, but not conferences. As you point out, that is hard to push through on a travel and expense level, but it’s what they should do, barring moving a couple of teams from east to west. Then again, with the auto makers all folding, Winnipeg Red Wings has a nice ring to it (j/k — I hope)

  • Histrionic

    It’s also frustrating to teams in the East that never see teams from the West, either. I could go without seeing the Sabres play Ottawa or Toronto a few times a year, because that’s overdone, to see SOMETHING from the rest of the league.

  • Joe

    If you’re aligning your conferences geographically, how does it make sense at all for Detroit to be in the Western Conference? Amongst MI residents, its a constant annoyance that we have to deal with all these late night games, because of trips to other western cities. Sorry if it happens to take away another Original Six team, but really, they were almost all located in the Eastern Time Zone anyways. As long as conference and divisional alignment is based on geography, there’s absolutely no reason why the Wings shouldn’t be in the East.
    What would probably be much more fair is some amount of realignment, in which geography is mostly irrelevant. However, such becomes even harder to justify as travel costs continue to rise.