NHL Realignment

Over the past few days, the NHL has been trying to realign the league. This issue came about when the Atlanta Thrashers became the Winnipeg Jets. The league wanted to realign for this season and came up with a similar format last year, but it was declined by the NHLPA for use as a bargaining chip in the impending lockout.

The league has now modified their proposal from last season and is bringing forth a new plan; one that sends Columbus and Detroit to the Eastern Conference. The previous proposal also had four conferences instead of the two we see in the current proposal. The current divisions is as follows

National Hockey League
Western Conference		Eastern Conference
Pacific	Mid-West	Central	Atlantic
Anaheim	Chicago	Boston	Carolina
Calgary	Colorado	Buffalo	Columbus
Edmonton	Dallas	Detroit	New Jersey
Los Angeles	Minnesota	Florida	NY Islanders
Phoenix	Nashville	Montréal	NY Rangers
San Jose	St. Louis	Ottawa	Philadelphia
Vancouver	Winnipeg	Tampa Bay	Pittsburgh
		Toronto	Washington

With the proposed format, the playoffs would include the top three in each division along with two wild cards from each conference; with the second wild card winner playing the team with the most points in the conference. This could allow for five teams from one division to be in the playoffs. The four division winners will play the four wild card teams in the first round. All the 2 seeds the 3 seeds from the same division in the first round as well. This will create a division playoff within the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The second round will see the divisional championship games. These will be played between the winners of the 1 vs. 4 series and the 2 vs. 3 series from the same division.

The winner of the Central and the Atlantic division playoffs will play for the Prince of Wales Trophy (Eastern Conference Champion) while the winners of the Mid-West and Pacific division playoffs will play for the Clarence Campbell Trophy (Western Conference Champion). The winners will play in the Stanley Cup Final.