NHL Realignment Project – Week 42: A 28-Team Experiment

Back by popular demand, week 42 put forth a realignment scenario that involves contraction. Gary, hide your eyes. The more the author thought about it, the more certain he was that it would never happen, and the post said so before drawing a single map.

The forces that would fight it

The entry opened by naming the opposition in principle rather than in detail: the forces that would rise up to fight contraction. Having listed them, the author then set them aside on the grounds that he is King of North America, and did it one more time anyway.

28 teams, four conferences, north to south

Since the king is great and kind, unless you are a Coyotes or Columbus fan, Gary Bettman got a bone: the four-conference set-up survived. The players got one too, in the form of the 93.3 percent who did not receive pink slips, with an even number of teams in each conference and travel kept reasonably limited to north-south routes.

The 84-game schedule

Eighty-four games, as the post noted, is still not enough for Gretzky's single season records to be threatened.

The playoff shape

The top four in each conference qualify. The first two rounds determine conference champions, the third round is the semifinals with the team holding the best regular season record choosing its opponent, and the fourth round is the Stanley Cup Finals.

A promise to Columbus and Phoenix

The post closed with an apology of sorts: dear Columbus and Phoenix, I promise you get to keep your teams next week. I've been mean enough for long enough. Everyone deserves a break, right?

That is the honest status of contraction as an idea. It produces the cleanest maps and the worst politics, and the archive treated it as an exercise in seeing the shape of the league rather than a proposal anyone would table.