Bruins & Habs have to be in same division/By S. Bradley
The projected move of the Winnipeg Jets from the Southeast Division to the Western Conference after the 2011-12 season has everyone, especially during this dead part of the hockey summer, formulating their realignment plans for the NHL.
It’s widely known that Detroit, Columbus and Nashville all want to move into the Eastern Conference, which could cause some heated debates should the league opt to just swap one of those clubs with Winnipeg. That’s why many are trying to find a way to placate all three Eastern-Western clubs and get Winnipeg to land in a happy home.
His first option does away with the divisions and just has two 15-team conferences. While that looks great to me (in all sports, not just hockey), we all know the owners are not giving up the extra cash that comes with winning a “division” and they’re not releasing the false sense of hope mediocre teams in a horrible division get by accumulating loser points and then saying “heck we’re only eight points out of the division lead” even though they might have the 10th or 11th-best record in the conference and have no real chance of making up the ground.
A second option maintains two conferences but includes four divisions, mostly separated along geographic lines. McGran’s plan looks like this:
Great Lakes Division: Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Columbus.
Atlantic Division: Boston, Rangers, Islanders, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Florida, Tampa Bay, Washington.
Midwest Division: Chicago, St. Louis, Nashville, Carolina, Colorado, Dallas, Minnesota, Winnipeg.
Pacific Division: Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Jose, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Phoenix.
And then his third plan, which I consider the most controversial, breaks up the league into four conferences. The conferences would have their own four-team playoff format and the conference winners would be the NHL semifinalists. It doesn’t sound all that radical until you see how the teams would be grouped.
Canadian Conference: Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver.
Eastern Conference: Boston, Rangers, Islanders, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington, Carolina.
Midwest Conference: Detroit, Columbus, Chicago, St. Louis, Colorado, Minnesota, Buffalo, Nashville.
Sunshine Conference: Tampa Bay, Florida, Dallas, Anaheim, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Jose.
Isn’t that great? We’ve gotten to the point where Canada is so worried it won’t have a team in the final four that it creates a system whereby a North-of-the-Border squad is guaranteed a semifinal berth.
But I’m not going to delve into the inherent ridiculousness of that concept. I’m more worried about rivalries, especially some of the longest-running ones in NHL history. Ones that are what hockey is all about.
Both of these second two plans separate the Bruins from their traditional rivals in Toronto and Buffalo. And worst of all, the Bruins aren’t in a division with Montreal. Of course, they’d still play the Canadiens. But not as many times and with not as much on the line. That’s almost as preposterous as the concept of the Bruins offering Steven Stamkos one-sixth of their salary-cap space.
There are other similar problems with these alignments that affect other teams. In one, Buffalo would be in a division separate from all its Eastern rivals and included with all teams that have been considered Western teams for some time. In another, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are no longer in the same division, a pairing that both teams fought hard for when the league last realigned.
But any new structuring of the NHL that doesn’t keep Montreal and the Bruins in the same division so they can fight to the death for a championship — and do it upwards of six times a season — can’t ever be seriously considered. It’s one of those rivalries that even when one of the teams is having a down year, the players and fans still treat the match-up like a playoff game. It’s a reason to buy a ticket, a reason to circle games on your schedule in July and a source of continent-wide, two-country media attention when the clubs lock horns and inevitably create some sort of controversial or unexpected situation.
Making all 30 teams happy with their league and divisional assignments and then creating a schedule that pleases everyone as well, is an unenviable and near-impossible task. Nonetheless, I can tell you without doubt that no plan that separates Boston and Montreal should have a place in anyone’s thought process.
The ones who pretend there are EASY solutions are splitting NJ & the NY teams in their proposal… about 10 miles away! That’s WAY more stupid than splitting the Bruins & Habs. If I can see a couple of games less of those diving & whining Habs, I won’t complain…
I’m Canadian and for the life of me, I can’t see how an all Canadian grouping would work. Vancouver would have to play more Eastern teams and we all know how they like to sink their teeth into Eastern teams……
It’s just wrong and it wouldn’t work. Keep two conferences and the divisions, but when it comes time for the playoffs, let the top 16 teams battle it out, no matter what side of the continent they’re on
Can’t break up the rivalry.
I also don’t think there’s a sinister Canadian plot to move these divisions around.
The power in the NHL resides in American hands. Jacobs sits at the head of the board of governors and Bettman is as American as it gets.
Sure, there’s lots of Canadian media and fans…but we don’t hold the chips.
From a business standpoint I do not see the league breaking up the Habs and Bruins. That is 6 sell out crowds no matter how well or poorly either team is playing. That rivalry is a huge one.
I think the easiest is to just flip Columbus or Nashville to the East into Atlanta’s spot. Columbus is in the same time zone. I would leave Detroit in the West-although Detroit won’t like it.
As an aside to this whole debate, how are the divisions not working as is? why reformat the whole thing when you can just exchange 2 teams? Also, to my previous comment, I understand the reason for this proposed swap is to cut down on travel and time changes, but I doubt there is any real way to do that. 3 divisions would be a start, but would require most teams to make long trips anyway and cut down on how often certain team are seen in a place like Boston. Not so much fun.
I live in Canada and the Canadian divsion makes no sense. There would be much more travel and time changes. As well, fans in Canada and the US Northeast would rebel against any attempts to lessen the greatest rivalry in hockey, Boston verses Montreal. The televsion networks must be opposed to this as well. The Habs vs. B’s has traditionally been highest ratings. If you need to move Winnipeg fine, but there must be a better ideas than what breaking Montreal away from Boston.
I can’t see Jacobs allowing the break up of the Montreal-Bruins rivalry.
“Isn’t that great? We’ve gotten to the point where Canada is so worried it won’t have a team in the final four that it creates a system whereby a North-of-the-Border squad is guaranteed a semifinal berth.”
You might want to restructure this paragraph, because the way it’s constructed makes it sound like Canadians at large have come to some sort of paranoid consensus, ‘developed/proposed a system,’ and are actually in favor of this ludicrous proposal. I can tell you that they absolutely, no way in hell, would be interested in such a plan; we value our traditions up here, especially as they pertain to our national sport, and the vast majority would think this is absolutely the stupidest realignment idea that they have ever heard. We like the existing, historic rivalries, and believe that above all else, they need to be maintained.
Conversely, in the even that you actually think that the people of Canada would generally be in favor of such a ridiculous idea, then Kalman, you seriously need to pull your head out of your ass. While many band-wagoners cling to the Nationality debate come playoff time, believe it or not, there are a lot of Canadian fans – like myself – who cheer for American teams, have for their entire lives, and don’t give a crap how many Canadian teams win the cup.
Nobody who loves this game would be interested in that proposal mentioned above; frankly, it’s an embarrassment to any self respecting hockey fan.
I don’t see a major realignment happening anytime soon. Until the league figures out what Phoenix (& Florida for that matter) are doing, they aren’t going to make any big changes. Or at least let’s all hope they don’t.
In the meantime, I don’t see the problem in just swapping Nashville with the ‘Peg. Then again, that seems to be the most logical thing to do… and as we all know Mr. Bettman is not a fan of such simple & rational solutions.
Fact is, all the league has to do is move Nashville to the Southeast, move Winnipeg to the Central. Also creates a geographic rival with Carolina, which they don’t currently have. But this is way to simple for the NHL to consider.
Problem is, one of the most influential teams, Detroit, have made it known of their desire to move east, and every time I see a mock realignment, Detroit moves into a division with Toronto and Montreal, and always at the expense of the Bruins. If I am Boston and Chicago (the last 2 champs BTW) I would fight long and hard to keep the Wings in the west. Wings moving leaves Chicago as the only Original 6 team left in the west, and lose their most historic rival. Does Toronto really need another rival, isn’t Ottawa and Montreal enough. Boston will not be in a division with Montreal for the first time possibly ever, and just as the rivalry is at a fever-pitch, no question the hottest rivalry in the NHL. But this is the NHL, and I fully expect the league to cater to the wishes of Detroit the same way they allowed Toronto to whine their way into the east back in the mid 90′s.
I say we have three conference, with one being a Sunbelt Conference of Tampa Bay, Florida, Dallas, Anaheim, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Jose, Nashville and Carolina.
Then institute a rule that is a majority of teams in a conference lose money for three years in a row, the conference and all the teams in it have to fold.
We’ll have most of hockey’s problems solved by the 2015-2016 season.
phoenix will be the new nordiques next year so here’s what i see…
smythe:
la
ducks
sj
nucks
flames
oil
avs
norris:
jets
wild
hawks
blues
preds
jackets
wings
stars
patrick:
bolts
florida
failers
dc
pitt
flyers
nj
adams:
sabres
nyr
nyi
b’s
ott
buds
habs
quebec
I don’t think the alignment, for the canadian team would work, but I don’t think that its a push to get canadian teams into the playoffs seeing as there has been one in the finals four of the past seven years.
Sacrelig!
Why not do three divisions with top 5 making the playoffs and the last spot (wildcard) is determined by points with seedings done by points and the division winners are guaranteed home ice until the cup semis? You could do a pacific, central/Southeast, and northeast division? The central would basically be the southeast shoved in with the central and Winnegpeg joining the pacific division. Helps to preserve rivalries that way, and no major rivalries are lost (except maybe for Vancouver vs the west, but everybody hates that team anyway and in a very different manner than Detriot.) The playoff structure with this plan may be too unorthodox and have fewer interesting situations posed, but it would work better than most of the crap in that article.
As an aside, keep Detriot in the west, send Columbus or Nashville over to the east, as both those teams are closer and make more sense in the east. I think rather than a massive realignment, we can just flip winnepeg into Nashville’s slot and send Nashville to the Southeast, which geographically makes sense. Why does Det want to be in the East anyway?
I hate that they got away with the Adams,Patrick, Norris etc. divisions. Especially seeing a lot of the current division names don’t represent the locations of the teams within it. Winnipeg in SE Div for example. Why can’t go back to honoring some of the great hockey pioneers but just modify it a bit. Howe,Hull,Orr, Beliveau, Gretzky, Lemieux divisions sound way better to me than these inaccurate regional names.
Let’s make it easy on them:
Eastern Conf. – Division 1
Boston Bruins
Buffalo Sabres
Detroit Red Wings
Montreal Canadiens
New York Islanders
New York Rangers
Ottawa Senators
Toronto Maple Leafs
Eastern Conf. – Division 2
Carolina Hurricanes
Florida Panthers
New Jersey Devils
Philadelphia Flyers
Pittsburgh Penguins
Tampa Bay Lightning
Washington Capitals
Western Conf – Division 1
Chicago Blackhawks
Columbus Blue Jackets
Dallas Stars
Minnesota Wild
Nashville Predators
St. Louis Blues
Winnipeg Jets
Western Conf – Division 2
Anaheim Ducks
Calgary Flames
Colorado Avalanche
Edmonton Oilers
Los Angeles Kings
Phoenix Coyotes
San Jose Sharks
Vancouver Canucks