Put another way, relative newbies like Tampa Bay and Anaheim have as many Cup wins individually as the Rangers, Leafs, and Chicago. That’s unbelievable.

And even the Wings, who have been the second best post 67-68 original six team with four Cups, are just one Cup better than Pittsburgh.

Bottom line, we can see the vast majority of the success of the original six occurred before 1967-68, but they’ve had no where near the expected impact post 1967-68.

I think Nashville would be a better choice as they could be moved straight to the SouthEast Division but Detroit wants back in the Eastern Conference to cut down on their travel and I’m sure the Wings will get what they want.

Anaheim
Dallas
Los Angeles
Phoenix
San Jose

Chicago
Colorado
Columbus
Pittsburgh
St Louis

Calgary
Edmonton
Minnesota
Vancouver
Winnipeg

Buffalo
Detroit
Montreal
Ottawa
Toronto

Boston
New Jersey
NY Islanders
NY Rangers
Philadelphia

Carolina
Florida
Nashville
Tampa Bay
Washington

Wouldn’t hurt to have new line ups in every division, they make way more cultural and geographical sense this way, and allow for some new and different rivalries to develop, after many years of the same old ones.

While I’m at it, I would like to see tournaments within the regular schedule, just to make the dog days of January / February more interesting. Divide teams into five groups of six teams each based on the decade of their origin, and when games in the regular schedule involve two expansion sisters, count the points toward a round-robin-like tournament. Doesn’t matter too much if there is imbalance by playing some teams twice and others six times, it’s just for fun, maybe trophies at the end. The in-schedule tournaments would be between:

The Original Six
Boston,
NY Rangers,
Toronto,
Montreal,
Chicago,
Detroit

The Sweet 60s
Pittsburgh,
St Louis,
Dallas (originally Minnesota),
Los Angeles,
Philadelphia,
Minnesota (I know they were added much later, but Minnesota had a team in the 60s)

70s Sisters
Vancouver,
Calgary (was Atlanta, added in 70s),
New Jersey (was Kansas, added in 70s),
Buffalo,
Washington,
NY Islanders

WHA 80s
Edmonton (arguably a 1979 team, but 1980 was their first finished season),
Winnipeg (used to be Atlanta, but did have Jets, added with WHA teams in 79-80),
Colorado (used to be Quebec, also 79-80),
Phoenix (was Winnipeg, added in 79-80),
Carolina (was Hartford, added 79-80)
Columbus (added in 2000, but an orphan for any other group…)

90s
Anaheim
San Jose
Ottawa
Florida
Tampa Bay
Nashville

I know as a Vancouver fan I always pay attention the odd times we play Buffalo, our expansion cousins. I always marvel at the powerhouses that came out of the WHA teams (8 cups). And of course the 60s teams seem almost as traditional now as original six and I regard Philly and Pittsbugh and the others as old teams.

Interestingly, 60 cups have been won by the original six teams, 6 cups by the 60s teams, 7 by 70s teams, 8 by the 80s teams….and 2 by the 90s teams.

1. Move Columbus directly to the SE
2. Move Columbus to another division in the East, which would require another eastern team to switch divisions (ex. Buffalo or Boston to the Atlantic)
3. Move Nashville directly to the SE
4. Go back to the old system of two divisions in each conference, give the top 2 in each division home ice, and not worry about the imbalance (ex. in 1989-90 the East had 11 teams and the West had 10)
5. Get rid of the divisions and just play it out (this is basically how the standings look in the newspapers after Jan. 1st anyways)

I would personally vote for 3 or 4