NHL Conference Realignment Great for Hockey Fans

The NHL's plan for conference realignment, while imperfect in some ways, will be an overall boon for hockey fans across North America, as it will improve the visibility of the game's stars during the regular season and forge rivalries during the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

The league's Board of Governors approved a plan that would split up the 30 existing teams into four conferences—two with eight teams and two with seven teams—not unlike the arrangement that existed before the 1993-94 season.

Conference foes will play each other five or six times each season along with home-and-home series with every team from the other three conferences during the regular season. The top four teams from each conference would then move on to a divisional playoff, with the winners from each conference reseeded for the final two rounds.

Confusing as that all may seem, there is plenty of reason for puckheads to get excited about the new format.

For one, the new arrangement ensures that every team will play every other team at home at least once over the course of a season. Fans in every city will now have the opportunity to see the game's biggest stars, including Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Claude Giroux and Steven Stamkos, on their home ice. 

The four-conference plan also enhances existing regional rivalries and will foster new ones, in both the regular season and the playoffs. Now, contentious pairs—like the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Philadelphia Flyers, the Edmonton Oilers and the Calgary Flames, and the Montreal Canadiens and the Boston Bruins—will face each other five or six times per season and will be more likely to skate into each other once again come springtime.

Furthermore, the changes open up the possibility of more interesting matchups arising in the last two rounds of the playoffs, with teams no longer bound by East and West. Hence, you could potentially see a semifinal series between the New York Rangers and the Los Angeles Kings, or even a Stanley Cup Final featuring the Rangers and the Boston Bruins.

Of course, there are some cons to consider in this shiny, new system. Early-round playoff series could get a bit repetitive, with teams from the same conference contending with each other year after year. It also leaves the door open for teams in stronger conferences to miss the postseason, even if they have more points than those in weaker conferences. For instance, had this alignment been in place last season, the Kings would've been left out altogether.

And, perhaps most disconcerting of all to hockey fans, a four-conference seeding system all but eliminates the potential for another sprint to the finish line like we saw toward the end of last season, when most of the seeding in both conferences was essentially up for grabs over the final two weeks.

Still, the advantages of stoking rivalries, spreading the league's star power across the landscape and diversifying the later rounds of the playoffs that will come from having four conferences far outweigh the few drawbacks that come with it. As such, fans of every sweater will have plenty to look forward to starting with the 2012-13 season, when the NHL's reshuffling goes into full effect.