No. The NHL's preferred alignment in December 2011 was scuttled by the NHLPA one month later. Therefore, the NHL had to adjust this (using today's names):Re these statements made recently by Bettman, if there are no plans for expansion or relocation, why were the East and West Conferences recently reorganized to have an unequal number of teams? I thought this was because expansion or relocation was anticipated in the near future.
Metropolitan CONFERENCE: CAR NJD NYI NYR PHI PHI WAS
Atlantic CONFERENCE: BOS BUF FLA MON OTT TBL TOR
Central CONFERENCE: CHI CLB DAL DET MIN NSH STL WPG
Pacific CONFERENCE: ANH CGY COL EDM LAK PHX SJS VAN
Each team within any given conference would play two games against non-conference foes, and the remaining games would be in-conference
Playoff qualification would be a strict top-four per conference qualification, with strict in-conference meetings for the first two rounds; the conference winners would then be placed in some kind of bracket, so it was possible to get a Rangers-Kings and Bruins-Blackhawks semifinal.
To appease the NHLPA, it was changed so that:
1) Playoffs weren't strictly top-four in four conferences, but top-three from each 'division', with two wildcards from each of the two conference
2) that change to playoff qualfication mitigated a change in the scheudle, as each conference would play against the other conference twice, the other division within the conference three times, and the rest in-division. Because you'd have to play three games against teams in your in-conference division, that ruled out Detroit and Columbus playing from the Western Conference because they'd have 12 games two or more time zones away, so...
3) Detroit and Columbus were moved from the Western Conference so that all 16 teams in the Eastern Time Zone were now in the Eastern Conference
With the above stated, does anyone truly believe today's setup was actually put in place to make room for two new teams? It's there to placate the NHL's members that had issues with the old alignment, and more importantly, to placate the NHLPA's desire to have a wild-card.