NHL Realignment Project – Week 40: The Arena Audit

Crazy deadlines at the real-world job pushed week 40 to a very late release. With the news of a potential buyer for the Phoenix franchise, the focus switched from maps to buildings: who has an arena, who soon will, and who can't seem to get one built.

The good

Kansas City has an NHL-ready arena just sitting there. The city of Seattle seems to be on the brink of getting one in a year or two. Quebec City was finishing up the last details for getting a brand new arena started as well.

Phoenix, for its part, has a good arena, and maybe with a new owner the franchise can start to spend money on marketing rather than only on players, and people might start showing up to fill it. Dallas was going through the same thing with its new owner, Tom Gaglardi. So the Coyotes stayed in the desert for this installment.

The bad

The biggest structural problem was out on Long Island, where an owner wanted serious concessions and overtures from Nassau County before committing to sticking around. That produced a scenario the author described as not completely out of the realm of possibility: the Islanders moving out of the market entirely.

The preemptive strike

Yes, there are other arena issues out there, but most are based on financial agreements such as revenue sharing and lease terms, not on structural failures like bad sight lines, low capacity or no luxury boxes. That distinction is what kept the Islanders in the frame.

One relocation plus two expansions

With three revenue-generating arenas ready or soon to be ready, it was hard to believe the commissioner's line that expansion was not in the NHL's near future. Expansion fees are where the money is for the league, far more than relocation fees. Add one relocation to two expansions and the league lands at 32 teams in four conferences of eight reasonably clustered teams.

The schedule

Geography, rivalry, and a nod to Icethetics

• No division is made up of more than two time zones, and no Eastern Time Zone team sits in the Western half of the breakdown.
• Every team visits every other team's building, a policy the author called long overdue.
• Other than Chicago and Detroit, all major rivalries are preserved, and the four Flyers, Rangers, Devils and Penguins teams stay together.
• The new Seattle and Quebec City clubs borrow their names and logos from Icethetics concepts, the Seattle Metros and the Quebec Tempest.

The playoff shape followed the conferences: the top four in each qualify, the first two rounds decide conference champions, the third round is a semifinal in which the best regular season record chooses its opponent, and the fourth is the Stanley Cup Final.