NHL Approves Radical Realignment Plan

[Upton]

NHL officials approved a radical realignment plan Monday that will give the league four conferences instead of six divisions and guarantee home-and-home series among all teams.

The Board of Governors authorized commissioner Gary Bettman to implement the proposal pending input from the NHL Players' Association. It could be put in place as early as next season.
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Teams will play home-and-home series against all nonconference teams and five or six games in their conference. The top four teams in each conference will make the playoffs, with the first two rounds consisting of solely intraconference matchups

http://espn.go.com/nhl/story/_/id/7321214/nhl-approves-radical-four-conference-alignment-plan

Here is the way the new as yet to be named conferences will look...

[a la izquierda]

1. I like this...

My husband and I are Rangers fans but we live in Columbus. Of course we thought we'd get to see a Rangers game here...but nope. This new system looks pretty cool.

[Upton]

2. I like it too..

I know Canuck fans are disappointed over not getting to see last year's finals opponent, the Bruins, this season in Vancouver. There are some obvious problems though. One being there are two 8 team conferences and two 7 team conferences. With the top 4 teams making the playoffs out of each conference, mathematically there's a better chance, 57% to 50%, for a team out of a smaller conference to qualify for the postseason..but nothing's perfect, and overall I think this realignment is a good thing.