Campbell and Wales have been long gone, and now the current NHL league structure is also one for the history books.  Teams had complaints:  there was too much travel for teams in the middle of the country, every team didn’t play every other team, traditional rivalries were threatened, not every big star played in every city, and the like.  Basically, it all broke down into scheduling and alignment concerns, and the NHL was more than happy to listen and put work in.  In the end, the NHL voted for a complete realignment with guaranteed home-and-home series between every one of the league’s 30 teams; 26 teams approved it versus only 4 negative responses.

“This is not a subject that everybody is going to get their first choice on,” admitted NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.  ”What you try to do is come up with something that everybody can live with, get comfortable with and understands the value of.  Because if you ask 30 clubs, you’d probably get 30 different solutions.  That’s what makes this a difficult process.

Here’s how the new conferences stack up.  There are two seven-team conferences in the Eastern time zone.  The first conference features New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York Rangers, New York Islanders, Washington, and Carolina.  The other new Eastern time conference features Boston, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Buffalo, Florida, and Tampa Bay in the other.  The third new conference is eight teams in both the Eastern and Central time zones and is comprised of Detroit, Columbus, Nashville, St. Louis, Chicago, Minnesota, Dallas and Winnipeg. The fourth conference, which has eight teams as well, is spread across the Mountain and Pacific time zones and includes: Los Angeles, Anaheim, Phoenix, San Jose, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Colorado.

Now, all they have to do is figure out an all-star game format that works and wrap Sidney Crosby in bubble wrap, and there might be a future for this league outside of its niche following.

Tags: NHL, National Hockey League, NHL realignment, NHL realigns conferences, NHL goes from six divisions to four conferences, NHL realigns into four conferences, Gary Bettman, NHL realigns into four 7 or 8 team conferences, geographic realignment for the NHL, NHL realigns around time zones, new NHL conferences

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