1. Just about all conferences in this proposal are localized for the most part. No more Minnesota division games in Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton. Dallas doesn’t have division games in San Jose, Anaheim, LA, or Phoenix.

2. What makes a rival? A playoff series. With this proposal your guaranteed 3 series of strictly divisional series. We have seen what Chicago/Detroit has been. Old schoolers remember the Chicago/St. Louis series where the penalty boxes were over crowded 4-6 deep at times. Having Minnesota and Dallas (former Minnesota team) meet could be intriguing.

3. How can Detroit not love this? Keeps same rivalries as now but adds Minnesota, Winnipeg, and Dallas. Not nearly as many late starts. 8:00 for them is better than 10:00. Same with Dallas and Minnesota.

Your logic in the realignment is so flawed I don’t know where to begin. You argue that Dallas should be in the central, but you don’t mention the team that is almost directly north of them….Minnesota. How insane is it that Winnipeg, Chicago, St. Louis and Detroit are all with around 10 hours drive time and not one of them are in our division?? Dallas is in the same time zone as Minnesota as well and the Wild have division games in Vancouver for God’s sake. The proposed alignment is perfect. All of the division rivals are no more than one time zone away and people in the midwest can watch their teams play before the worthless 9:30pm central start time. The old Norris division was classic, this gives us a taste of those timeless rivalries.

If you look at baseball, not only do you have a team like the Texas Rangers in the central time zone playing teams from Anaheim, oakland, and Seattle, but they are also planning on MOVING the houston astros from their central time zone to a division where most of the teams play 2 time zones away. Also each league in baseball has an eastern division and a western division and those teams play each other regularly throughout the season. If it isn’t a problem for a product like baseball where they have to do it for twice as many games, why is it a problem in the NHL?

Then you have the NBA (the closest schedule to the NHL). When the Sonics moved from Seattle to Oklahoma City, was there this much of an out cry for realignment? no. in fact most people don’t even realize that Oklahoma City plays in the Northwest division against teams like Portland and Utah. You also have teams like Memphis and New Orleans who play in the Western Conference where they have to travel and play on the West Coast a lot and yet you don’t have New Orleans lobbying to get into the South Eastern division.

It sucks for Detroit to have to play teams from the West Coast so much, but they can afford to do it. You don’t change the whole structure of a league that is just now getting back to where it wants to be post-lockout so that one team can have a better tv schedule. It works for other leagues and it works for the NHL. Just move Winnipeg, Dallas, and Columbus(they can’t afford it like Detroit can) and get over it.

Winnipeg is a vote from the Eastern Conference that is 16 votes.

New Jersey doesn’t really get effected according to Lou. 17 votes.

With only 3 votes needed, I can’t see how this doesn’t get passed, however I see the 2 Florida teams complaining about their travel schedule since Washington and Carolina could be in their divison, If they get Buffalo and 3 canadian teams to go to their side, the realignement would hinge on the Pennsylvania and New York teams (and Boston). I think both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia might like this because they keep each other in the same divison. New York teams don’t have to travel far, so please don’t derail this

West Coast games that start at 7pm Pacific time start at 10pm Eastern time, not exactly conducive to great TV ratings for West Coast road games in Eastern Time Zone TV markets – which account for over half the teams in the league (including, I need not remind anyone, most of the largest TV markets), unlike “pretty much every other sports league,” whose teams are distributed much more evenly across the time zones. So the time zone issue is a much bigger deal in the NHL than it is in other leagues.

Can we just stop complaining about a system that works for pretty much every other sports league?

Dallas and Minnesota play for more late games than Detroit does. It is crap that Minnesota and Dallas have to travel 2 time zones to play division games. Detroit only has to travel a short distance to another time zone to play St. Louis and Chicago. Nothing like Minnesota playing divison games in Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton.