NHL Realignment Approved; What Does It Mean For Buffalo?

It’s worth a shot, like anything else. If it doesn’t work, they’ll be changing it again anyways.

The only thing that really bothers me is the almost incestuous setup of the playoffs, with the first two rounds still being within the ‘conference’.. like Andy noted, that’ll create overkill within the same conference while barely playing teams from the others.

If you call the two Eastern conferences EA and EB, I’d much rather see something along the lines of EA#1 vs EB#4, EA#2 vs EB#3 etc.

Or reseed the eight teams from the two Eastern conferences (using strength of schedule data) and stay with the classic #1 vs #8, #2 vs #7 etc.

Uneven divisions and a playoff format that isn’t even resolved yet? A fair playoff format and varied scheduling to all teams should have been the top priorities in realignment. Compared to those issues, time zones and geography and increasing revenue should all be secondary goals. What does this plan do? It gives a severe disadvantage to teams in a strong conference, and to teams in 8-team conferences, while giving an advantage to teams in 7-team conferences or in weak conferences. The full playoff format isn’t even determined yet, proving how low it ranked on their list of considerations. Perhaps worst of all, how screwed up is it that we will now play Tampa Bay and Florida 6 games EACH per season, but we will only play teams like Philadelphia, New York, and Pittsburgh twice each… the same number of times we would play Edmonton or LA…. This is crap and I am appalled (yet somehow not surprised in the least) that the league has adopted it over a simpler realignment plan.

When Phoenix moves to Toronto or Quebec City, conf. C will be an 8-team conference. Meaning Buffalo will be further disadvantaged. Not that it is any better that the current Western teams face that disadvantage; no one should. If they are moving Phoenix East anyway, then why couldn’t they have made a 2-conference format? Top 8 teams from each 15-team conference make the playoffs. Simple enough, right? If they wanted to abolish divisions to balance the schedule, they could have…. but the result of this BS plan is less diversity in opponents, not more. Our playoff and regular season diversity of opponents has actually decreased with this plan. Sure, we now play every team at least twice. But we also play less games against every team in Conf. D, and more against TB and FLA. Why? Because Bettman didn’t know where else to stick ‘em. They don’t even attempt to hide that this was an afterthought, stating that they wanted to reunite Washington with their Patrick division rivals, and then allocated Carolina, Florida, and Tampa amongst the two conferences just because they had to go somewhere…. But they didn’t. They could stay in the Southeast division, adopting Nashville or Columbus while Winnipeg moves to the Western Conference with a potential for a few West teams to shuffle divisions. Would retain a fair playoff seeding and format…. I guess they never considered that option though, only this crap or a Winnipeg-Detroit/Columbus swap. Why consider only two options, the simplest and the most complex, while ignoring the most sensible solutions which lie somewhere in between?

I love it!!!

No Pittsburgh, no Detroit…. when they were originally talking about have both of them in the division.

division play is fine, however in the early 70’s they seeded the playoff teams 1-16 that is why Sabres played Vancouver or Chicago in early rounds..so NHL can keep the divisions at 4 ..but then seed the conference playoff teams 1-8 and seed the strongest conference vs. the weakest based on total points of playoff teams. So, East plays atlantic seeded 1-8 one year..maybe the next year it is east vs far west seeded 1-8 that way you get some unique match ups.

Some teams will get hosed and I’m sure we’ll hear all about it when it happens (especially if it’s us), but you still have at least half of the teams in a “Conference” going to the playoffs, so you can’t really complain. I like the home and away thing and I like our Snowbird Division.

I want to see them do two things:

Expand to 32 teams to fill out the 8 divisions and make playoff seeding more fair to everyone
Reduce the season to 76 games:
2 home/2 away versus conference rivals (28 games total)
1 home/1 away versus everyone else (48 games total)

This would make everything even. No rotating 5-or-6 games versus your division, no teams getting more home games in a season series, and everyone has the same odds of making playoffs (50/50).

If someone bids to keep Phoenix, you could add Hartford to Conf. D and Quebec or a 2nd Toronto team to Conf. C. If Phoenix moves to Conf. C (Toronto or Quebec), then you could make a new team in Seattle instead.

Two games a year for me — one in LA, one in Anaheim! Woo hoo!

I like that they are changing the schedule to allow for everyone to play everyone else, home and away, and… well, that’s the only thing.

I’m sure NBC is happy to have a few more Penguins vs. Capitals games in a season.

Other than the Florida anomaly, which isn’t all the bad, at least the conferences make geographical sense. Pittsburgh’s assignment is quite blatantly enforce rivalries with the Caps & Flyers & capture the NYC market, but whatever. I don’t hate the new conferences too much, but I hate hate hate haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate the stupid playoff format. And I’m going to get sick of our co-conferencers. I haven’t worked out the math, but why not more out of conference match-ups & fewer in-conference games? The balance is pretty absurd. I wouldn’t even hate it if they played conference foes x times, everyone from 2 conferences z times, and the forth conference y times between x & Z rotating the schedule yearly, sort of NFL-style.

It’s possible that down the road they are either going to add two teams or contract two teams.

We will just have to sit back for the next season or two and see how things shake out.

For a conference composed of 8 teams, play interconference 4x/year (=28 games)

Play every team of 2 other conferences (assume 15 teams total) twice (=30)

Play team members of remaining conference (assume 7) 3x (=21)

Total = 79 games; pair the remaining 3 games randomly or via some system.

Other possible number sets = {24, 30, 24, 4} {24, 32, 21, 5} {28, 28, 24, 2}

I’m going to email Gary Bettman right now.

In the meantime it would have made more sense to just move Winnipeg west and either Nashville or Columbus to the SE.

I hope you realize how ridiculous that statement is. This is the NHL.

I would have preferred they moved to 2 division in each conference instead of 4 conferences. That way the Cup is still between the East and West – but I guess they had to get the support of Western Conference teams somehow.

I pretty much stated my opinion in the fan shot. This realignment is reasonably good for the Sabres but it is horrible for the league as a whole and should be immediately rejected. It gives a competitive and economic advantage to the fourteen eastern teams, who have more than a 7% higher probability of reaching the post season than the 16 western teams. For that reason alone, the realignment plan should be scrapped because it does not treat all the teams in the league equally.