Quacked

This story was originally published in the December 23 issue of Devil’s Advocate.

Doomsday is upon us all. Or maybe not. It depends on who you ask. For the first time in almost two decades, the NHL is restructuring its teams in an effort to placate the masses (which in this case means the networks, the players, the owners, the fans and just about anybody else who invests time or money in the sport).

It’s a little axiomatic to say any decision that aims to please everybody ends up pleasing nobody, but it rings especially true when it comes to a hot topic like scheduling in professional sports leagues. Invariably, some teams, comfortable in their current situation, will be resistant to the idea of change, while others will welcome it with open arms.

In this case, it’s the teams in the Western Conference cast as the malcontents. Although gripes abounded, chief among them was the issue of travel time. Whereas teams in the Eastern Conference currently have just a single timezone to deal with during intraconference games (Winnipeg excepted), teams from the west have to travel among up to four just to play teams in the same conference.

Under the current format, teams like Columbus and Detroit have legitimate grievances: playing in the Western Conference, the Blue Jackets and Red Wings are the only teams to play home games in the eastern time zone. [Ed. note: Officially, it was the Minnesota Wild, the Dallas Stars and the Blue Jackets on record as being displeased with crossing time zones so often.] The bulk of their schedules comprise matchups with teams situated westerly, which practically guarantees extended periods of travel on every road trip. A team in the Eastern Conference (again, not counting the Winnipeg Thrashers) playing other conference teams never has to leave the comfort of its own time zone. After the rigors of an 82 game schedule, it’s not hard to surmise how the debate’s friction came about.

The new divisional (or is that conference-al?) alignment aims to rectify the travel issues facing Western Conference teams by abolishing the six existing divisions and reformatting them into four new divis— er, conferences. The NHL was apparently hoping fans’ memories are short enough to have already forgotten the last time the league’s teams were arranged into four groups (1993), because back then they were called — wait for it — divisions.

Here are the four new conferences:

Click to enlarge.

These as-yet-unnamed conferences restore some equilibrium to the distribution of time zones, although there are still some daunting travels in familiar regions — Edmonton to Los Angeles is not exactly a commuter flight, no matter what Wayne Gretzky says.

The purpose of all the rearrangement is ostensibly to address the aforementioned travel concerns while also looking to improve the visibility of every team in every city. All out-of-conference games for teams are now split evenly into home and away dates, which will ensure that fans in every arena see all 29 other teams at least once a season. The potential benefits garnered by guaranteeing that teams in every market will get to see superstars like Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin will no doubt appeal to owners, especially ones whose teams may not sell to capacity every night.

(PHOTO: Jeff Gross/Getty Images)

Teams will play games against other teams in their own conference five or six times a year, depending on the size of their conference and the opponent in question.

Here is the official explanation that was included in the league’s press release:

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.

Are you thoroughly confused yet? Well, stick with this, because it gets even more complicated.

The new playoff format is itself relatively simple. The top four teams in each conference will qualify: the first-place team will play the fourth-place team and the second-place team will play the third-place team. The winners will then face each other for the right to represent their conference in the final four. How the matchups between those teams is determined has not yet been decided.

Where it gets tricky is in the semantics between conference sizes. In the smaller conferences (C and D), four of seven teams will qualify for postseason play, giving each team an objective statistical probability of 57.14% that they will see playoff action. That is up almost 3 percentage points (not 3% as some are reporting, it’s actually more than 7%) from the curent format. Comparatively, the odds in the eight-team conferences (A and B), the probability drops more than 3 percentage points (or about 6.7%) to even odds (50%).

(PHOTO: Jeff Gross/Getty Images)

That’s bad news for teams like Anaheim that are already in fierce competition for playoff spots when April rolls around. Teams in “Conference B” will also be fighting tooth and nail for playoff berths, with a handful of young up-and-coming teams to challenge the perennial favorites.

In C and D (née Eastern), very little has changed as the Northeast and Atlantic teams remain together, while the Southeast gets split between them. Playoff races should feature familiar foes, even if they’re slightly less intense than in the other two conferences.

Implications beyond the schedule have thus far been left to fan inference. In Anaheim, fans have been pondering the possibilities and it looks like there could be new issues rising from the ashes of the ones that get solved.

First, consider the implications of the reduction in out-of-conference games. It’s great for Ducks fans that their team will play rivals San Jose and Los Angeles up to six times a season (the current schedule calls for six games against intradivisional opponents). And getting to play Edmonton and Vancouver an extra two times? Bring it on! But what of non-regional rivals like Detroit? Suddenly Anaheim has its annual meetings with the Wings cut in half permanently — or until the next major scheduling overhaul, at least. Those games, which represent rivalries that developed under the old format, have been shuttered to make allowances for every team to visit every other team at least once.

Is it a fair trade-off? The owners might be happy to see all 30 teams in their arenas each year, but until new rivalries are fostered, the additional travel time that such a move necessitates might be seen as a nuisance.

(PHOTO: Jeff Gross/Getty Images)

It also removes any mystery when two teams finally meet in the Stanley Cup Final. To find he best example of how futzing with the schedule can cause that very type of collateral damage, one need not look any further than Major League Baseball. Interleague play has all but wiped out the mystique of the World Series matchup when teams from the American League used to take on a National League opponent for the first time all season.

Granted, there are some nuances that make the NHL’s situation a little different — there are no separate sets of rules governing each conference akin to the designated hitter in baseball — and playing more often could hypothetically foster rivalries where none existed before, but going from a single game a year to two against a team like Carolina will not make the Hurricanes the Ducks’ sworn enemies in the playoffs.

All is not lost, though. For starters, the league has not decided how the final four teams will be seeded, so there still exists the potential to see teams from the old east/west format who would never have played for the Stanley Cup now do so. The rivalries that survive after this season could intensify under the pressure of a playoff series. Wouldn’t it be great to see a New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers final? How about the Ducks and Red Wings for all the marbles? It could happen, pending a decision by the board of governors.

Even better, the reintroduction of divisional-style playoffs in the first two rounds should result in a dramatic uptake of interest among fans. To date, the Ducks and Kings have never met in a playoff series. If both teams make the 2013 playoffs, however, their meeting would be virtually inexorable.

(PHOTO: Jeff Gross/Getty Images)

Teams like the Ducks could also see increased exposure to the east coast media. Whether or not that’s ultimately to the team’s benefit remains to be seen, but any additional awareness could have a trickle-down effect on the team’s bottom line. The league’s smaller market teams, bound as they are by self-imposed budgets, could see an increase in gate revenues thanks to the wider variety of teams coming to play at their venues.

Like any seismic shift in the hockey landscape that portends upset among the sport’s purists — shootouts being an obvious recent example — realignment could threaten the very fabric of the league’s existence if the doomsayers are to be believed. More likely, it will bring with it many of the benefits promised to the teams pressing for changes now, with some side-effects that are endemic to any monumental change to an established order.

And what of our Ducks? The usual suspects all remain within striking distance, promising to incubate and foster hostilities within the state of California — nothing new on that front. Whether or not seeing more of the east coast will be a boon or a bust remains to be seen. We’ll take a pass on making a more definitive judgment until the new playoff structure is formalized.

Now is it too much to ask for the Adams, Norris, Patrick and Smythe divisions — I mean, conferences — back?