The league announced Thursday that its proposed realignment plan is a go for next season after getting approval from the Board of Governors.

It was the final step in the process after the NHL Players’ Association gave its consent to the plan last week. The NHLPA has agreed to this framework through the 2015-16 season with the expectation that both sides will begin reviewing how realignment has fared after the 2014-15 season.

The plan, details of which ESPN.com reported on Feb. 26 after obtaining a league memo sent to its 30 teams, will see the Detroit Red Wings and Columbus Blue Jackets move to the Eastern Conference from the West, a move that both franchises had been pushing for.

Now all 16 NHL clubs in the Eastern time zone are in the same conference, leaving 14 teams in the Western Conference. It will also see the NHL move from six divisions to four.

“The new alignment will place several clubs in more geographically appropriate groupings, and will intensify already-fierce rivalries throughout the league,” the NHL said.

The Dallas Stars have complained for years about being in the Pacific Division with clubs two time zones away. They were pushing to find a new group and they got their wish, now in a division next season with Chicago, Colorado, Minnesota, Nashville, St. Louis and Winnipeg.

Stars president and CEO Jim Lites told ESPN.com that the move has “been a long time coming,” saying that when the Stars went to the Pacific in 1998, it “was supposed to be a temporary move.”
“When you have 30 to 40 percent of your road games started two time zones west of you it makes it hard for your fans to watch on TV. It just make it very difficult and it impacted our TV ratings,” he said. “With this change, it brings some rationality in terms of our schedule and our divisional opponents. I mean, people don’t realize this but Winnipeg is closer to Dallas than Phoenix geographically. So our travel schedule has certainly improved overall with this realignment. The Dallas Stars are very happy.”

The playoffs have also been changed, going to a division-based system. The top three teams in each division qualify for the playoffs with the remaining top two clubs in each conference qualifying as wild-cards. So in theory, for example, you could have five teams from one division make the playoffs and only three from another.

Teams will play other clubs from the other conference at least twice each season in a home and away.

The post NHL governors OK realignment appeared first on IdealCapper.

The plan was detailed in an NHL memo sent to all 30 clubs Tuesday, which a team source leaked to ESPN.com.

The new plan calls for divisional playoffs, not conference playoffs as the NHL currently has. The division winner with the most regular-season points will play the lowest-seeded wild-card team in the first round, with the other division winner playing the other wild-card team.

The plan still needs approval from the NHL Players’ Association plus the NHL’s Board of Governors. The NHLPA and NHL have been working on these changes for the past three weeks.

If approved by all parties, the plan would go into effect for next season.

The Eastern Conference would feature the Atlantic and Central divisions while the Western Conference would have the Mid-West and Pacific divisions.

The Pacific Division would feature Anaheim, Calgary, Edmonton, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Jose and Vancouver.

The Mid-West: Chicago, Colorado, Dallas, Minnesota, Nashville, St. Louis and Winnipeg.

The Central: Boston, Buffalo, Detroit, Florida, Montreal, Ottawa, Tampa Bay, Toronto.

The Atlantic: Carolina, Columbus, New Jersey, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington.

Elliotte Friedman of CBC’s “Hockey Night In Canada” was first to report about these four new groupings over the weekend.

The playoff format as detailed in the league memo Tuesday calls for the top three teams in each division to earn postseason berths. The remaining four spots would go to wild cards, the top two records in each conference. That means there’s a possibility five teams make it from one division and only three from another.

The schedule matrix would see each team play teams in the other conference both home and away.

The NHL’s 30 owners voted yes to a new realignment plan in December 2011 that was based on a four-conference format but also saw Detroit and Columbus still in the West.

The change from the December 2011 configurations sees Detroit and Columbus go to the East plus Colorado join the Mid-West teams.

The NHLPA blocked the December 2011 plan, citing travel concerns for its players plus playoff inequity of having the top four teams in each conference make the playoffs under that format, unfair for the two eight-team conferences.

The changes proposed by the NHL in this realignment format come as a result of those concerns from the NHLPA, the two sides negotiating for the past three weeks on finding a better solution for realignment.

The NHLPA wants to further address it with its players before consenting to it.

The post Realignment would mean 4 divisions appeared first on IdealCapper.