NHL Realignment Plans?

With the current messes that are the Phoenix Coyotes and New York Islanders, the big Four-Letter Sports Network that is partially responsible for the NHL receiving very little national exposure since the strike five years ago decided it would be fun to have four of its hockey-thumpers play NHL Commissioner and offer up some ideas for realignment in the NHL.

Here are some of idea highlights:

• John Buccigross adds 10 new teams in smaller markets, including adding another team in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, as well as another in the Toronto area) without dumping or or relocating any of the current 30 teams, and splits the league up into two monster conferences (the Gretzky Conference and the Orr Conference) with no divisions. His idea is simple: to have an aggressive shared-revenue system that could create more total revenue than the current system.
• Scott Burnside offers a simple plan, as well. He suggests not eliminating the Coyotes altogether, but rather have them as a roving, nomad-ish kind of franchise. They'll play in whatever city can sellout at least two games. He, too, offers adding another team in the Toronto area. His realignment also eliminates the Panthers since no one cares about them in Miami, or anywhere else. And his divisions are basically the same other than renaming them with corporate sponsors (Atlantic: Shales Cafe; Northeast: Upfront; Southeast: Flying Saucer; Pacific: Paul's Cocktail; Central: Rossi's; Northwest: Sherlocks) and moving one or two teams around.
• Pierre LeBrun's realignment has the most changes, and might be the most far-fetch idea of the four. He's eliminated eight current teams and relocated five of them overseas to Europe. The eight eliminated: Phoenix, Tampa, Atlanta, Florida, Carolina, Nashville, Long Island and yes, Jersey. The five new Euro-teams: Prague, Stockholm, Moscow, Helsinki and Cologne. He's also added another team in Toronto courtesy of the Islanders, moved the Coyotes back to Winnipeg and added a team in Seattle. The conferences have been renamed back to Wales and Campbell, and four of the six divisions have the old names back, as well: Adams, Patrick, Norris and Smythe. The last two divisions would be Salming (the European teams) and (Jack Kent) Cooke (the current Pacific Division with Phoenix substituted for Seattle).
• Barry Melrose's idea is the most simplest idea of them all. The Mullet has relocated three teams (Phoenix, Atlanta and Florida) to Toronto, Saskatoon and Portland. He's left everything else unchanged.

And just for the sake of this post, I have a plan, as well. I would take bits and pieces of the four ideas above to come up with my own new NHL.

As much as I like the idea of Euro-teams, the travel would be brutal, thus making that idea almost impossible. So instead of five Euro-teams, I would relocate six teams: Phoenix, Atlanta, Florida, Tampa, Carolina and the Islanders. Three of them go to Canada (Coyotes back to Winnipeg, the Islanders become Toronto's second team and one team goes to Saskatoon in Central Canada), one goes to Milwaukee, one goes to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area as a second team there and the last heads to Seattle or Portland on the west coast.

I like the idea of renaming the conferences and divisions back to the way it was before they went to six divisions. The Wales Conference would house the old Patrick (NY, NJ, Philly, Boston and Washington) and Adams (Pittsburgh, Columbus, Nashville, Milwaukee and St. Paul) divisions and add the Gretzky (Montreal, the two Toronto teams, Ottawa and Buffalo) division, while the Campbell Conference gets the old Norris (Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Minnesota and Colorado) and Smythe (Vancouver, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Saskatoon) divisions while adding the Cooke (LA, Anaheim, San Jose, Dallas and Seattle/Portland) division.