With the NHL season opening tomorrow in Prague and Stockholm, there is some question about whether the NHL should expand to Europe. There are pros and cons, and honestly I don’t know where I stand. There are already so many international players in the NHL (about a third of the players are from outside North America) that I don’t feel like we’re missing a lot of great talent elsewhere. And really, you’d be taken NA players and moving them to Europe. But, it’s good to grow the game elsewhere, and in a lot of Europe, the game is already thriving, just not with the NHL.
However, if the league does expand, I wanted to think of what it would look like.
Currently the league looks like this:
- Eastern Conference
- Atlantic Division
- Philadelphia
- Pittsburgh
- New York Rangers
- New York Islanders
- New Jersey
- Northeast Division
- Boston
- Toronto
- Ottawa
- Buffalo
- Montreal
- Southeast Division
- Tampa Bay
- Florida
- Atlanta
- Washington
- Carolina
-
Western Conference
- Central Division
- Chicago
- Detroit
- Columbus
- Nashville
- St. Louis
- Northwest Division
- Vancouver
- Edmonton
- Colorado
- Minnesota
- Calgary
- Pacific Division
- Dallas
- San Jose
- Los Angeles
- Phoenix
- Anaheim
So that I don’t take up my whole website with this idea, I am going to put in a break. But there is more after the break, I swear!
I would change it to something like this. Some current NHL teams would go away.
- Eastern Conference
- Liberal Media Elite Division
- Philadelphia
- Pittsburgh
- New York Rangers
- New York Islanders
- Tampa Bay
- Washington
- Eh Division
- Boston
- Toronto
- Ottawa
- Buffalo
- Montreal
- New Jersey
-
Western Conference
- Yzerman Division
- Chicago
- Detroit
- Anaheim
- Los Angeles
- St. Louis
- Dallas
- Chilly Division
- Vancouver
- Edmonton
- Colorado
- Minnesota
- Calgary
- San Jose
-
European Conference
- Kurri Division
- Stockholm
- Goteborg
- Ornskoldsvik
- Helsinki
- St. Petersburg
- Moscow
- Kolzig Division
- Berlin
- Munich
- Prague
- Vienna
- Bratislava
- Hamburg
That’s right, I got ride of Nashville, Columbus, Phoenix, Atlanta, Florida and Carolina. Progress needs to be made, sue me! I also think we should go back to giving the division odd names that aren’t really helpful at all. It makes it really difficult for casual observers to understand what’s going on, but that’s alright, if hockey was easy, everyone would do it. I think it adds a mystique to the game.
For the way the game structure would work, I propose the following. We’ve now got a 36 team league, with three conferences of 12 and six division of 6. I say you play 6 games against the other teams in your division (6 games * 5 teams = 30 total games), 4 games against the other teams in your conference (4 games * 6 teams = 24 total games), and then 1 game against all the remaining teams (1 game * 24 teams = 24 total games). That’s a total schedule of 78 games. A few less games than the current schedule, but there will be more traveling involved, so that’s ok.
The big remaining question is the travel. However, you could take one team and have them go on a 3-4 week trip where they play all the teams in Europe. That’s 12 games in 3-4 weeks, which is doable, even with the travel. The European teams will also come over to North America for similar trips. While it is a tough travel schedule, I don’t think it’s crazy.
So do it NHL, expand to Europe! So ends the longest post I have ever written that no one will read.
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