Realignment Scenario: How Thrashers Relocation Affects the Pittsburgh Penguins

Throughout the Atlanta Thrashers' existence in Georgia, the Penguins repeatedly destroyed them. So the relocation for Pens fans probably just means that we'll destroy them in Winnipeg instead of Atlanta.

But there's more.

Gary Bettman stated in his state of the NHL address before Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final that relocation will be necessary after this coming season. For now, Winnipeg will remain in the Southeast and any geography student will shake his head in disgust when he looks at the current divisional alignment.

However, eventually Winnipeg will be moved to the Western Conference. This will cause for some shake up in the NHL. Winnipeg moving west means that they will probably be placed in either the Central or the Northwest division.

This will leave a vacancy in the Southeast division. The closest geographical NHL city is Nashville. So they will probably be placed in the Southeast. This means Pittsburgh will play Nashville four times.

Nashville is a strong up and coming team and they are lot more difficult matchup for the Pens than the Thrashers ever were. However, they're in Washington's division so it's highly unlikely we'll see Washington beating up on their division every year with two solid teams in Tampa Bay and Nashville in their division. 

Bettman also stated in his state of the NHL address that there was a good chance that Eastern Conference teams would play Western Conference teams twice each year rather than once, which is the norm now.

So this means that Winnipeg should be just placed in the Central division and everything is good right?

Possibly, but another scenario has both Detroit and Columbus moving to the Eastern Conference.

There is speculation that teams these teams, who are in the eastern time zone, want to move to the Eastern Conference. They want to do this to ease the burden of travel. Since both cities are far more eastbound than Nashville is, the scenario exists that Nashville stays in the Western Conference's Central division but both Detroit and Columbus east.

This means a flurry of changes will come which will probably look like this and include a rare imbalance in the East and West because other than the Winnipeg team, there really isn't any team that the league can move westward.

Atlantic

 Pittsburgh
New Jersey
Philadelphia
New York Islanders
New York Rangers

Northeast

Boston
Buffalo
Montreal
Toronto
Ottawa
Detroit

Southeast

Columbus
Carolina
Washington
Tampa Bay
Florida

Central

Winnipeg
St. Louis
Chicago
Nashville

The rest of the divisions will be untouched.

So as seen above, the Atlantic won't change, but having Detroit in the Eastern Conference means that we can never have a Penguins-Red Wings Stanley Cup again, but more importantly this implies that it will be increasingly more difficult to make it to the Finals with the Red Wings lurking there every year.

Columbus can probably be another team the Penguins can beat up on in the regular season so that may help them.

Also, the Central division with four teams looks like a division which Chicago can constantly dominate.

It seems highly unlikely that the NHL will head toward the unbalanced conferences notion. But if Detroit wants to move east there seems like no other solution because geographically, all of the teams other than Winnipeg are placed properly in the NHL. 

The first scenario seems more likely but either way, the road to the Cup will be a little bit more difficult for the Penguins with Nashville or Detroit in the Eastern Conference.