186 replies to this topic

[8 Legged RedWing]

This is absolutely awful. If you watch playoff hockey for the next 20 years, you are going to get sick and tired of seeing the same teams over and over. Think about it.

Yea because it's not like we haven't seen the same teams the last 5 years... (Phoenix, San Jose, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Anaheim)

Edited by 8 Legged RedWing, 06 December 2011 - 02:51 PM.

[Scorpion]

For everyone saying the Florida teams got screwed, the longest straight line distance in that new conference is Florida (Miami) to Montreal (1388.9 miles) That basically the same as Edmonton to Phoenix in the new format (1387.4 miles).

http://www.sportmapw...th-america/nhl/

[Crashnburnluder]

True but the Wings would have to get through their own conference first. Maybe a lot of the other teams in the conference don't have the kind of hype appeal that makes the public fawn over them but they are still very good teams.

-Chicago, of course, is a top contender.
-Dallas and Minnesota are making big strides on getting better.
-Nashville and St. Louis are very solid teams as well.

The main point is that a lot of those teams are getting better and it's not as if the Wings only have to worry about Chicago, especially with the increasing trend in parity and the looming shift in eras after Lidstrom retires.

I'm not saying that Detroit won't be good. We really don't know at this point. I'm just thinking the whole "alignment has guaranteed another 20 years of playoffs" reaction is premature.

II understand what your saying, I'm not saying its a forsure 20 years but I like our chances better is take a couple getting better teams with no true cores intact... Besides Chicagos CORE instead of dealing with teams that have true cores on their team and will be contenders for the next 5-10 years. The other side is who knows in 10-15 years from now maybe prospects don't develop and we end up being horrible lol

For everyone saying the Florida teams got screwed, the longest straight line distance in that new conference is Florida (Miami) to Montreal (1388.9 miles) That basically the same as Edmonton to Phoenix in the new format (1387.4 miles).

http://www.sportmapworld.com/map/ice-hockey/north-america/nhl/

I think everyone is saying they got screwed because all the conferences are set up geographically, and I think anybody who can read. Map would just say... WTF???? When you have to fly over an entire conference to get to yours something's not right. With that situation it's almost just like having Winnipeg in the southeast lol... It could have easily been done by moving Two teams to the northeast ifron the Atlantic...

[LeftWinger]

Details mon!

http://eye-on-hockey.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/27694626/33719669



No word on division names yet, but Patrick/Smythe/Norris/Adams sound promising.

East Crosby/South Crosby/North Crosby/West Crosby is what I am hearing...



I just don't think they are going to go with the old names again. Although they sound the best (because we are used to them) I think they may go with something new. Will Howe, Hull or Orr be in there? Possibly Gretzky or Lemieux? How about Gretzky (conference with Edmonton in it) Lemieux (Conf with Pit) Yzerman (Detroit Conf.) Lefleur (Montreal Conf.)

[amato]

theres some cons but overall i like the fact that we play each team at least twice.. also obviously shorter travel will help out.

only thing not to like is the unbalanced conferences.. of course the NHL favors the east as usual. should be 2 conferences (one 8 team division and one 7 team division per conference) with moving a team (preferably detroit) to the east. at least then two sides would be even....

playoffs could be something like top 2 or 3 teams in each division make playoffs then the next 4 or 2 best records in the conference (respectively) make the playoffs as well..

not sure how i'd want the seeding to go for playoffs to go but at least this would make making the playoffs a little more fair..



idk just an idea.

also doesn't the NHLPA have to approve the realignment still? sorry if this was already addressed, i didn't read all 8 pages of the discussion

[Bring Back The Bruise Bros]

4 conferences? Or divisions? 4 divisions, 2 conferences?

[amato]

4 conferences? Or divisions? 4 divisions, 2 conferences?

it's going to be four conferences.

[akustyk]

I for one like this realignment. and am pretty impressed with the fact that Bettman got this so easily done.
world is full of haters and the guy gets fair share of blame for everything starting from erection problems
to starvation of malaysian flying ants... but this realignment is his huge success and will probably bring
a lot of pennies to the NHL treasury. money to pay those Florida teams, among others.

as for Penguins and Caps... if you look at the stats of 3 recent years, their conference will be the most
competitive at this moment and it's never sure both of them will advance into playoffs at all.
Bruins on the other hand...

[chrisdetroit]

That map shows just how screwed the Florida teams got, and just how much leverage the teams in Conference D have. Must be nice to be able to ride your bike to away games if you wanted to.

How would you do it then. It's a geography problem. The 2 Florida teams are to far away from the cluster of the other teams in the East. The only other way to do it is group them with other teams in the south like they are currently. If you do that though, you end up splitting up the teams along the Eastern seaboard. Yes, the Florida teams have more travel but it's in the same time zone. PLUS, they get to have Montreal and Toronto play in Florida regularly and those will attract big audiences.

I think that it is about as fair as it can be. As far as riding your bike to away games, do you remember when a few years ago, teams played there division foes EIGHT TIMES a year. And that was because Lou Lamrillo wanted the Devils to be able to walk to their home games in MSG and on the Island. Now that was unfair.

I for one like this realignment. and am pretty impressed with the fact that Bettman got this so easily done.
world is full of haters and the guy gets fair share of blame for everything starting from erection problems
to starvation of malaysian flying ants... but this realignment is his huge success and will probably bring
a lot of pennies to the NHL treasury. money to pay those Florida teams, among others.

as for Penguins and Caps... if you look at the stats of 3 recent years, their conference will be the most
competitive at this moment and it's never sure both of them will advance into playoffs at all.
Bruins on the other hand...

I'm with you. As I was reading how Bettman got this passed, I was thniking, if only Obama had those kind of skills. But I digress

[LeftWinger]

This is what I understand: 4 Conferences, teams play ALL teams in other conference twice home and away. Which would be 44 games leaving (is it an 82 game or 80 game season?) 36 or 38 games to play in-conference. Not sure the amount of games, but since there are only 7 teams in two of the conferences that makes it a little uneven in the two that have 8. So not quite sure how the in-conference games are going to be played.

Playoffs, from what I understand will be the top 4 in each conference will make the playoff. The first two rounds will be within your division. The "Final Four" will be reseeded 1-4 by the records, possibly setting up a (former) east vs. west semi final's and a (former) west vs. west or east vs. east SCF. This will allow a Detroit vs. Pittsburgh semi and Detroit vs. San Jose SCF or a Penguins vs. Bruins SCF.

This is just what I heard and understand.

I wish they would've addressed the points system though, it used to be a mark of excellence to get over 100 points in a season, now we have 95 point teams missing the playoffs because of this current system. Some folks want a 3 point game, but that again will taint the 100 point mark, I say go back to the 2 points for a win, 1 for a tie and 0 for a loss (in OT as well.) This would be especially helpful in this new conference setup considering that you may have some teams not making the playoffs in a conference because the other team in another conference has less wins, but has more overtime loses than regular loses...

[amato]

This is what I understand: 4 Conferences, teams play ALL teams in other conference twice home and away. Which would be 44 games leaving (is it an 82 game or 80 game season?) 36 or 38 games to play in-conference. Not sure the amount of games, but since there are only 7 teams in two of the conferences that makes it a little uneven in the two that have 8. So not quite sure how the in-conference games are going to be played.

from nhl.com....

"In the seven-team Conferences, teams would play six times -- three home, three away -- for a total of 36 inter-division games. In the eight-team Conferences, teams would play either five or six times in a season on a rotating basis -- for a total of 38 inter-division games.The teams in the seven-team Conferences will have 46 out-of-conference games, including 23 at home and 23 on the road. The teams in the eight-team Conferences will have 44 out-of-conference games evenly split between home and away."

Edited by amato, 06 December 2011 - 04:23 PM.

[LeftWinger]

I'm with you. As I was reading how Bettman got this passed, I was thniking, if only Obama had those kind of skills. But I digress

...not that I am saying Obama is a good President, but are you saying that Bettman would be a great United States President? Just kidding, I know what ya meant!

I agree, outside of just moving a team to the old East, this is the best scenario. I like it, especially less travel to the west coast for us. Only playing as far west as Winnipeg more than once is great. I also like the chance of a SCF with two former Western conference teams. Would've been awesome to play the Avs back in the day in the SCF! I would say Bettman got this one as close to right as it's gonna get and only having 7 teams in two of the conferences lets him eye up future expansion.

Weird thing is going to have to get used to not calling a team an Eastern Conference or Western Conference team. But again, I do like it.

from nhl.com....

"In the seven-team Conferences, teams would play six times -- three home, three away -- for a total of 36 inter-division games. In the eight-team Conferences, teams would play either five or six times in a season on a rotating basis -- for a total of 38 inter-division games.The teams in the seven-team Conferences will have 46 out-of-conference games, including 23 at home and 23 on the road. The teams in the eight-team Conferences will have 44 out-of-conference games evenly split between home and away."

Sounds good to me...82 games. Just have to get rid of the 1 point for a loss in OT and all will be well!

[Kage5691]

Extremely excited for this realignment. No more 2nd round playoff outings to San Jose. I really like the idea of playing every team in the league at least 2 times a year. That is a very good change and also I'm not complaining about the conference we are in. The idea of divisional playoffs excites me more than the current system. We will be playing against divisional rivals every year to attempt to make it to the semi-finals. I could see the rivalry with Chicago heating up a lot..

[Holmstrom96]

Bettman... did something right?

I love this four conference system. They've got Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit together. They also have Toronto, Boston, and Montreal together, which is also pretty cool.

The only people that got screwed were the Florida teams.

[amato]

Extremely excited for this realignment. No more 2nd round playoff outings to San Jose. I really like the idea of playing every team in the league at least 2 times a year. That is a very good change and also I'm not complaining about the conference we are in. The idea of divisional playoffs excites me more than the current system. We will be playing against divisional rivals every year to attempt to make it to the semi-finals. I could see the rivalry with Chicago heating up a lot..

agreed. there will be a lot of rivalry type first and second round matchups and it'll hype up the playoffs more..

[haroldsnepsts]

How would you do it then. It's a geography problem. The 2 Florida teams are to far away from the cluster of the other teams in the East. The only other way to do it is group them with other teams in the south like they are currently. If you do that though, you end up splitting up the teams along the Eastern seaboard. Yes, the Florida teams have more travel but it's in the same time zone. PLUS, they get to have Montreal and Toronto play in Florida regularly and those will attract big audiences.

I think that it is about as fair as it can be. As far as riding your bike to away games, do you remember when a few years ago, teams played there division foes EIGHT TIMES a year. And that was because Lou Lamrillo wanted the Devils to be able to walk to their home games in MSG and on the Island. Now that was unfair.

I was obviously kidding about riding bikes to games, but Conference D has a pretty perfect travel situation.

How are the Florida teams too far away from the teams in the East? They're even further from the ones in their new Conference.

To me the more practical solution is to include the Florida teams with the more southern of the eastern teams. It's not strange to you that a team that plays outside Miami Florida is in the same conference as Ottawa, even though there are 7 other clubs that are closer by hundreds of miles?

Edited by haroldsnepsts, 06 December 2011 - 05:28 PM.

[chrisdetroit]

I was obviously kidding about riding bikes to games, but Conference D has a pretty perfect travel situation.

How are the Florida teams too far away from the teams in the East? They're even further from the ones in their new Conference.

To me the more practical solution is to include the Florida teams with the more southern of the eastern teams. It's not strange to you that a team that plays outside Miami Florida is in the same conference as Ottawa, even though there are 7 other clubs that are closer by hundreds of miles?

Yes, I agree it is strange but how else would you do it? If you have 4 conferences then the southern one would be Florida, Tampa, Washington, Carolina and who else - you need at least 7. Pittsburgh? Philly? One of the New York teams? If you do that then you have teams that are less than 50 miles apart in different conferences. Philly and Pittsburgh are not very close to south Florida.

The geography doesn't work

[akustyk]

here's some data I calculated for the new conferences



first three columns: average number of point of teams in the conference per year
middle three columns: average number of points for all except two best conference teams (best in this 3 year span)
last three columns: average number of points for all "non-playoff teams" (3 or 4 worst team in the conference throughout 2009, 2010 and 2011 seasons)

analysis:
B is the conference that can potentially produce most diversity in terms of playoff teams. Wings and Hawks look like safe bets but remaining 2 seats can be filled by almost any other team. D on the other hand looks like fixed choice.
as for conference "toughness"... D and A look like strongest of all, with the advantage to D.


now let's take a look at another set of data - a score of playoff success of conference teams:




explanation:
PO total - scores for all teams in conference
PO poteams - scores for 4 best playoff teams in conference
first score is in the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 model (1 point for making playoffs, 2 for winning 1st round, ... , 5 for SC champ)
second score is for 1, 3, 6, 10, 15 model (a model that emphasizes deeper playoff runs)

analysis: teams in conference D had most success. for B it's the Wings and Hawks but these both teams run up the score significantly. for the rest... C looks like Bruins title to lose and A is Canucks vs Sharks, whoever is better at the moment.
in short: it looks like West could be Wings/Hawks against Sharks/Canucks, while in East it's Bruins against whomever survives D...


take it FWIW and don't read to much into the data...

Edited by akustyk, 06 December 2011 - 06:37 PM.

[LeftWinger]

Yes, I agree it is strange but how else would you do it? If you have 4 conferences then the southern one would be Florida, Tampa, Washington, Carolina and who else - you need at least 7. Pittsburgh? Philly? One of the New York teams? If you do that then you have teams that are less than 50 miles apart in different conferences. Philly and Pittsburgh are not very close to south Florida.

The geography doesn't work

Well then they need to expand to Mississippi and Alabama and Kentucky. Then they can have the two florida teams, Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Nashville and Kentucky.

here's some data I calculated for the new conferences

2011 2010 2009 2011 2010 2009 2011 2010 2009 A 92,75 95,00 89,75 86,67 90,00 83,50 80,50 87,00 82,75 B 91,13 92,25 92,00 87,67 87,33 86,67 85,50 83,50 85,00 C 89,86 86,29 89,00 84,60 82,00 82,80 77,00 81,67 85,67 D 93,86 94,14 95,00 88,80 87,00 90,20 82,33 89,67 87,33

first three columns: average number of point of teams in the conference per year
middle three columns: average number of points for all except two best conference teams (best in this 3 year span)
last three columns: average number of points for all "non-playoff teams" (3 or 4 worst team in the conference throughout 2009, 2010 and 2011 seasons)

analysis:
B is the conference that can potentially produce most diversity in terms of playoff teams. Wings and Hawks look like safe bets but remaining 2 seats can be filled by almost any other team. D on the other hand looks like fixed choice.
as for conference "toughness"... D and A look like strongest of all, with the advantage to D.


now let's take a look at another set of data - a score of playoff success of conference teams:
PO all PO best A 23 38 20 35 B 21 43 20 42 C 20 38 19 37 D 27 50 23 46

explanation:
PO all - scores for all teams in conference
PO best - scores for 4 best playoff teams in conference
first score is in the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 model (1 point for making playoffs, 2 for winning 1st round, ... , 5 for SC champ)
second score is for 1, 3, 6, 10, 15 model (a model that emphasizes deeper playoff runs)

analysis: teams in conference D had most success. for B it's the Wings and Hawks but these both teams run up the score significantly. for the rest... C looks like Bruins title to lose and A is Canucks vs Sharks, whoever is better at the moment.
in short: it looks like West could be Wings/Hawks against Sharks/Canucks, while in East it's Bruins against whomever survives D...


take it FWIW and don't read to much into the data...

I don't think this turned out the way you were seeing it in your head....I'm confused.

[akustyk]

I don't think this turned out the way you were seeing it in your head....I'm confused.

try again...