The NHL released a memo to its league members detailing that the proposal featuring four conferences has been scrapped in favor of a new proposal, according to multiple reports on Tuesday afternoon.
NHL realignment: League keeps divisional breakdown but reverts to East, West conferences
The NHL’s latest proposal for realignment involves four divisions in two conferences.
Christian Petersen
Elliotte Friedman of CBC reports that the NHL has reworked the proposal to include two conferences with two divisions per conference. Much like the current format, the conferences will be differentiated as Eastern and Western.
The Eastern Conference will contain two, eight-team divisions. They are divided as follows, via CBC.ca:
Atlantic Division
Central Division
Teams in the Eastern Conference will play 28 games against teams in the Western Conference (one home, one road), 24 games against opponents from the other division (with the extra home game being rotated each year) and 30 games against teams in their division (two teams five times, five teams four times).
The Western Conference will contain two, seven-team divisions. They will be divided as follows:
Midwest Division
Pacific Division
Teams in the Western Conference will play 32 games against the Eastern Conference (one home, one road), 21 games against opponents in the other Western division (extra home game will be rotated each year) and 29 games against their own division (one team will be played four times instead of five times).
In terms of playoffs, the top-three teams in each division will qualify for the playoffs. The fourth seeds will be open as wild cards, which means divisions potentially have five teams earning playoff berths. The tie-breaker to determine the seeding of the wild cards will be the team’s final point total (lowest points faces highest point-earning division winner).
The NHL and NHL Players’ Association are expected to meet following the 2015-16 season to determine if the format is working.
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