Is a 3 conference league unavoidable?

[Crayton]

I'm not sure how a team in Houston or Austin or Kansas City would harm the value of existing teams, on the contrary that's where the growth potential is for the entire league.

Bingo. There are 4 fewer American teams in the NHL than other "Big Four" leagues. Atlanta, Houston, KC, Portland, and maybe even Milwaukee could fill those gaps.

Not saying the NHL "needs" to expand, only that they there is room.

 

[Barclay Donaldson]

It depends on the market, for example in the case of Austin similar to Vegas I believe that the only way for the NHL to go at all is to go first. Houston of course is fundamentally different, it will work now and it will work in 20 years, but even in that case it would be better to have those 20 years there than to not to have them.

They can grow hockey there without weakening the league by giving it an expansion franchise. The NHL is fine the way it is once they add Seattle. Putting expansion teams everywhere because the team could be successful is insane. AtExpansion for expansion sake isn't healthy. That's how you get unstable franchises, of which the NHL has seen plenty. Heck, even Montreal was on shaky ground when the Nordiques became relevant shortly before leaving. A 36 to 40 team league isn't going to happen because at some point you have to say no. And North American based sports leagues have found it. It's 32. It isn't going to change anytime soon. It will especially not happen in Houston and it won't happen in Austin now because no one wants to drop the money that Daly and Bettman require to join the big boy table.

 

[Albatros]

Expansion for expansion's sake would be Saskatoon or Hamilton, but I don't think that applies to markets where the league has no presence of any kind at the moment. Considering how Dallas, Colorado, Vegas etc. have been doing I'm not really concerned about the health of Houston, Austin, or Kansas City either.

 

[Barclay Donaldson]

Expansion for expansion's sake would be Saskatoon or Hamilton, but I don't think that applies to markets where the league has no presence of any kind at the moment. Considering how Dallas, Colorado, Vegas etc. have been doing I'm not really concerned about the health of Houston, Austin, or Kansas City either.

The NHL wants to be like the MLB, NFL, NBA. They all have 32. They’re not expanding past that. That is the end of any argument. Everything Bettman has done over the past 2 decades has been to accomplish that. Read literally anything he’s put out.

Scheduling, TV, everything works very well with 32. Everyone gets a happy share. Be happy with that, the NBA could expand to other places easier than the NHL and hasn’t. There’s a reason. Going to anywhere, even Austin, KC, etc is expansion for expansion sake whether you believe it or not.

Colorado is winter sports territory, they should be doing fine. That’s no surprise. Dallas has a very populous state behind it, that shouldn’t be a surprise. Vegas is in year 2 and haven’t been anything other than good. Their strength has yet to be decided. Florida Panthers started the same way, we know how that’s turned out.

And it doesn’t matter about the health of Houston, Austin, Kansas City, and others. It’s the health of the league. Expanding because giving markets those teams could be good is what the KHL did, and look at how that’s going for them. Give them minor league hockey. They’re not going to gamble with any more franchises.

 

[Albatros]

The KHL is a political project largely funded by the oil and gas industry, you have a team like Neftekhimik (Petrochemist) Nizhnekamsk existing only because of it, with the NHL that wouldn't really be much of a factor even in Texas. You have the Dallas Stars, a passably successful franchise in one metropolitan area. But in Houston or Austin they're not really a thing, and unlike in Hamilton or Saskatoon, people aren't going to follow another franchise lacking their own.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Will disagree with you on Toronto because the Maple Leafs are king there, people have tried major junior teams in Mississauga and Brampton, one folded and the other is barely holding on."
Major juniors isn't the NHL. Neither is the AHL. This is like saying "no market should be considered for a sport unless it's seeking out and has a waiting list for tickets that runs two states over." That's not how it works.

Hartford is split between two huge markets, and isn’t even the biggest city. If it weren’t for their sick unis, no one would even remember them except for that team that played in a mall.

I totally agree with this, and I've pointed out the uniform thing for at least a dozen years and counting.

 

[Barclay Donaldson]

The KHL is a political project largely funded by the oil and gas industry, you have a team like Neftekhimik (Petrochemist) Nizhnekamsk existing only because of it, with the NHL that wouldn't really be much of a factor even in Texas. You have the Dallas Stars, a passably successful franchise in one metropolitan area. But in Houston or Austin they're not really a thing, and unlike in Hamilton or Saskatoon, people aren't going to follow another franchise lacking their own.

But the KHL expanded to areas like Helsinki, Minsk, Bratislava, and Prague because those areas like hockey and they could be moderately successful franchises. NHL could be successful in most markets under good circumstances. But at some point you have to close the gates. Keeping the league strong and keeping expansion going are not compatible after 32 teams.

 

[MikeyMike01]

From 30-38 there will be two conferences.

Maybe some day when there’s 40 teams they’d consider four conferences.

Never three, makes no sense. Awful idea.

 

[Barclay Donaldson]

Look at Ottawa. It is still very roughly split between Montreal and Toronto fans. There’s a decent number of the younger generation who are Sens fans, but thinking any respectable chunk of an established NHL market is going to change loyalties because a new team pops up is flawed logic. There’s still a fairly large percentage of young people in Ottawa who are Toronto or Montreal fans despite Ottawa being their hometown and the Sens being a competitive team for most of their lifetime.

 

[Barclay Donaldson]

Look at Ottawa. It is still very roughly split between Montreal and Toronto fans. There’s a decent number of the younger generation who are Sens fans, but thinking any respectable chunk of an established NHL market is going to change loyalties because a new team pops up is flawed logic. There’s still a fairly large percentage of young people in Ottawa who are Toronto or Montreal fans despite Ottawa being their hometown and the Sens being a competitive team for most of their lifetime.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Look at Ottawa. It is still very roughly split between Montreal and Toronto fans. There’s a decent number of the younger generation who are Sens fans, but thinking any respectable chunk of an established NHL market is going to change loyalties because a new team pops up is flawed logic. There’s still a fairly large percentage of young people in Ottawa who are Toronto or Montreal fans despite Ottawa being their hometown and the Sens being a competitive team for most of their lifetime.

The Senators are what, 26 years old? Ther were utterly terrible their first 4 years in the league. Plus, they have a decent chunk of hockey fans who reject the team because of their current owner; losing in the middle of that isn't helping any.

You're on target with some of this, but the same could have been said about the Islanders joining the league with the Rangers in place or the Devils joining the NY market when the Islanders were winning 4 Cups and the Rangers well-established. New teams don't instantly convert fans, and they don't fully carve out their niche over 25 or maybe even 40 years.

 

[kvladimir]

Getting back to 3 conferences:

This topic is purely for the sake of speculation, as it has already been mentioned that the league has no intention of going away from either 2 conferences/4 divisions of 8 or just 4 conferences of 8. But I love speculating on alignment and playoff format ideas, and a 3 conference format is one of my 3 main concepts!

Also, a previous mentioned how other than Arizona in the new alignment, every team has what it wants, I actually disagree somewhat: I think the alignment for every other team is acceptable, but not necessarily "what they want". I personally see ARZ, COL, DET, CAR, CBJ, TB and FLA teams as "out of place" somewhat in the current alignment.

My 3-Conference alignment would be a 10/11/11 split:

Pacific Conference: ANA/ARZ/CGY/COL/EDM/LA/SJ/SEA/VAN/VGK
Central Conference: CAR/CHI/CBJ/DAL/DET/FLA/MIN/NSH/STL/TB/WPG
Eastern Conference: BOS/BUF/MTL/NJ/NYI/NYR/OTT/PHI/PIT/TOR/WSH

Schedule would be 4 games vs Conference rivals, 2 games against the other 2, with an extra home and away game against 1 Conference rival for each Pacific team to make up for having 1 less team.

This alignment re-establishes some good rivalries (mainly DET/CHI) and fixes Arizona's problems. Obviously the Central is a bit of an oddity: I see it as CAR/TB/FLA sacrificing a few more desirable teams as rivals in exchange for less travel overall (they get most of the closest teams geographically, including each other).

 

[kvladimir]

As for the playoff format, it only needs to make the playoff odds equal between the conferences to make the uneven number of teams and odd number of conferences a non-issue:

There are 2 options to achieve this: automatic playoff spots to the Pacific top 3, and Central/Eastern top 4, plus the next 5 best teams by record (call these "Wild Cards" I guess?), not exceeding 7 teams from any one Conference. This way, the number of teams from each Conference that make the playoffs averages out equally: 3-7 (avg 5)/10 (Pacific) and 4-7 (avg 5.5)/11 (Central/Eastern).

Similarly, another option (simpler, but less fair) would be Pacific top 4, Central/Eastern top 5, plus just 2 Wild Cards, resulting in 4-6 (avg 5)/10, and 5-7 (avg 6)/11, giving a tiny statistical advantage to the Central/Eastern Conferences.

So, the first round will always be some form of 4/4/6 split with no crossovers, or 2 conferences will have an odd number of teams. You can just have a single crossover between those conferences, pairing best-vs-worst in the combined group until you get the one crossover, then within-conference matchups for any remaining teams. However, in the case of a Pacific/Eastern conferences with odd numbers scenario, I would instead have one team from the Central cross over with each of the other 2, to minimize time zone travel.

On a similar note, since the Central Conference is made up of Central and Eastern time zone teams, and split 6/5 no less, I would have a rule that no Eastern team in the Central conference is eligible to cross over with Pacific teams, and no Central team is eligible to cross over with Eastern conference teams. This way, teams like DET/CBJ/FLA do not have to play Pacific teams in the 1st or 2nd round, unless there are only Eastern teams left in the Central, which is unlikely with the 6/5 split.

With that all said, here is what the playoffs this year would look like in this format (obviously the results would be different with a different schedule, but for the sake of an example):

Pacific: CGY/VGK | SJ/STL
Central: TB/DAL | NSH/CBJ | WPG/CAR
Eastern: BOS/MTL | WSH-PIT | NYI-TOR

In the second round, if SJ wins, you just have 1 crossover between Central/Eastern, and if STL wins, you have a Pacific-Central and Central-Eastern crossover, likely dictated by which time zone each winner of the Central matchups are. The Central team playing CGY/VGK would not automatically be STL.

 

[HugoSimon]

That has a lot to do with Ottawa being Canada's transplant mecca.

 

[Djp]

the league could go to 36 teams with 4 9 team conferences

schedule is 5 games within conference for 40 games
one game against 18 teams in 3 divisions for 18 games
rotating one conference H-H for 18 games
total 75 games

top 2 get byes in each conference
3-6 best of 5 round