NHL: Geographic Division Realignment that almost works

Note: I'll be adding some hockey commentary to my blog, more on that later this week. 

Last year, I wrote about geographic misalignment of teams. Often, teams in the major sports are put in divisions with geographic names that have nothing to do with their geographic positions. One of the most egregious examples of the misalignment in any sport was the Winnipeg Jets. The Jets, the third northernmost  in the NHL, was in the Southeast division, along with teams from Florida, North Carolina and Washington D.C. This made absolutely no sense. (Tidbit: The Jets used to be the Atlanta Thrashers until they moved to Canada). The general problem with using geography to define conferences is that most of the places we consider to be the west are large areas but with low populations and therefore no professional teams in the 4 major sports. (Hi, Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas and Nebraska). This leads to an uneven split among "west" teams and "east teams" and things that initially sound weird but don't look as terrible on a map. For example, the state of Tennessee is one state away from the Atlantic Ocean, but has two sports teams in the Western Conference of their respective leagues (Memphis Grizzlies [NBA] and Nashville Predators [NHL]).

Starting this season, the NHL realigned their teams and changed the divisions from six to four. Happily, the divisions (mostly) make sense. All of the teams that are in the Western Conference are to the west of the teams in the Eastern conference. Most of the division splits look clean on a map.  

There's one small problem. Florida. On paper, it would appear that Florida shouldn't have hockey. Ice is a major part of the sport, and Florida is far from a cold weather state. However, the Tampa Bay Lightning were 8th overall in home attendance and the Florida Panthers were a respectable 22nd. The Florida teams are also in the Atlantic conference where the closest team is Detroit. Yep. Detroit and Tampa Bay will be geographic division rivals. They split the East Coast and put the northernmost teams in the Atlantic conference, the mid-Atlantic teams in the Metropolitan Conference and the Florida teams in Atlantic Conference. The NHL came so close to having a great system and unless they know that both teams are moving, north, it appears that there will be a gaping hole in the conference system for the years to come (although at least hearing Florida in the Atlantic conference doesn't grate my ears). On the other hand, it might be the best thing that the NHL could do because the Florida teams aren't particularly close to any other teams (the Seattle [NFL] problem) and it's not as bad as it could be. It's by far the best conference alignment of the four major sports

The other major change is the playoff setup. Each conference has 8 teams that make it out of the conference. The top 3 teams from each division will make the playoffs. Out of the teams that are left, the two teams with the most points from each conference will also make the playoffs. The divisional teams will play each other to determine a divisional champion, and then the two divisional champions play each other to determine a conference champion. As per the usual, the two conference champions will play each other for the Stanley Cup. 

The NHL is the only sport that will use divisions for any reason other than determining seeding. This should make for some interesting debate concerning how playoff seeding is done.