Why do we *NEED* to have home/away inter-conference in the schedule? People keep claiming ticket holders want to see McDavid or something but there was a very interesting thread about this last year here where KevFu did a lot of research on attendance and resale prices and it turns out the numbers are noticeably worse for inter-conference compared to divisional rival games.
Home/Away vs Everyone is Bad for Business
If you cut that down to going through the other conference you get a nice clean 16 inter-conference + 24 other conf division + 42 divisional.
The math of this schedule is obviously true.
The math of KevFu is not as true as it looks initially, because the reality is that certain teams are NOT road draws no matter where they play, and there is insufficient data to really prove his supposition.
Nevertheless, if the league were to go to a 1 game versus opposite conference schedule, I maintain that the East and West STILL have different needs, and that the schedule you proposed is perfect for the West: 6-3-1.
However, in the east, where the big draws are spread across both divisions, I think that the schedule would start with 4 games v opposite conference = 32 games.
That leaves 34 against your own division, and that would be fine by me.
My own absolute favorite sched (well, not really, because my favorite has QC in it), goes like this:
4 separate conferences.
Play 2 of them games = 32 games
Play the other 1 game = 16 games
Play the rest in your division.
I would do a full rotation on the who plays who, so that everyone sees all the other teams in their barn 5 times in 6 years. That's hardly a miss at all, really, and re-emphasized divisional play.
But there are other choices, too.