NHL Realignment Project – Week 46: Relegation Arrives

Listen up, all you hooligans. This week the project did something that absolutely, positively never would happen in the NHL, or the NBA, NFL, MLB or pretty much any other North American professional sports league. It instituted a system of relegation and promotion, just like in most of the global soccer leagues.

How the system works

For anyone unfamiliar with it, the premise is simple. There are multiple league levels of the sport in question, and at the end of each season a certain number of teams from each level either drop to the next level down, which is relegation, or move up to the next level up, which is promotion, based on the standings or the table.

Building the three tiers

The 30 teams of the NHL and the 30 teams of the AHL were combined into one system. Using the records at the end of the 2011-12 campaigns, the top 20 NHL teams became the Premier League. The other 10 NHL teams joined the 10 best AHL teams to make up the Alpha League. The remaining 20 AHL teams made up the Beta League.

The rules on movement

At the end of every regular season, the bottom four teams of the Premier League drop to the Alpha League, with a corresponding promotion of the top four Alpha teams. The same applies between Alpha and Beta. Playoffs happen for the top 16 in the Premier League and the top 16 in the Alpha League, and playoff results do not affect promotion, which is based purely on regular season records.

Why it would be worth it

• Opportunity: teams in smaller markets with no hope of attracting an NHL team could earn their way up the food chain and get a shot at the Stanley Cup.
• Opportunity of a second kind: cities that could probably do well with an NHL team, Seattle, Portland, Quebec City, Hamilton, Kansas City, Hartford, Las Vegas and Salt Lake among them, could lure a Beta team instead of jumping straight into the top flight.
• Fan protection: relocation of Premier and Alpha teams would be banned, so fans in the two elite tiers would know their team would not be stolen.
• Regular season stakes: since promotion and relegation run on standings rather than playoff results, the whole table matters from top to bottom.

Why it can never happen

• The AHL and NHL teams are affiliated with each other and often share the same owners.
• The NHL draft would be a cluster with 60 teams involved.
• Travel would be a nightmare in the playoffs if geography was not part of the equation.
• Rivalries are the lifeblood of the league, and this effectively kills them.

Which is why the post ended where it started: this will never, can never, should never happen. It was just for fun, from a fan of Brazilian soccer who has often wondered how relegation might look in a North American league.