Today the inevitable finally became a reality as re-alignment is officially ago for the 2013-14 season.  By now I’m sure everyone knows what this means for the local teams, as the current Atlantic Division will gain three new teams – Washington (an old Patrick Division Rival, so they’re not really new), Carolina and Columbus.  Detroit and Columbus both switch over to the two Eastern divisions, which are unnamed as of yet, with Winnipeg going to the West – giving the East two eight-team divisions and the West two seven-team divisions.

Also, the playoff system will undergo some tweaking, as the top three teams from each division will gain automatic berths in each conference’s eight-team postseason, with the top two remaining teams getting ‘wild card’ berths.  In essence, instead of three automatic division winner berths and the five best remaining teams in a conference playoffs, there’s six automatic berths and two wild-cards in a division-based playoffs.  Each division’s #2 and #3 seeds are guaranteed to play each other in the first round.  The division champion with the most points in each conference will play the wild card with the fewest points in that division’s playoff series and the other division winner will play the top wild card in that division’s playoffs.

In layman’s terms, let’s use last season’s point totals as a guide to what that’ll mean under the new system.  In our division, the Rangers (109), Penguins (108) and Flyers (103) would get automatic playoff spots while Boston (102), Detroit (102) and Florida (94) would be the automatic berths from the other division.  New Jersey (102) and Washington (92) would gain the wild-cards as the top teams remaining, with Ottawa (92) being the first team out of the playoffs.  New York would have played Washington in the first round since they finished with the most points and the Caps with the least, so in essence the Devils would be a crossover team facing Boston in the Northeast/whatever playoffs.  Philly-Pittsburgh and Detroit-Florida would be the other first-round series.

It’s sobering to think under that format the Devils probably don’t get out of the first round last year.  Be that as it may, the Atlantic/whatever name it winds up being Division championship would have been Rangers-Flyers assuming playoff results from last year held, with Boston-Detroit the other likely division final.  Both winners would then face off in the Conference Finals.  In that respect, the final four is similar with the two remaining teams in the East facing off for a berth in the Finals against one of the two remaining teams in the West.  At least the playoffs themselves are still fundamentally unchanged – it still takes four best-of-seven series to win the Cup, there’s no ‘extra’ playoff teams.

Of course assuming last year’s point totals would hold up would be erroneous since the schedule format itself has also undergone a more radical change.  Under the new format (which will remain in place for ‘at least’ two years), each East team would face its division rivals either four or five times – two teams five times, the other five teams four times, with the extra game presumably rotating year-to-year between different division teams.  You also play each team in the other East division three times – two home, one away or vice-versa.  Ironically, this format for conference games isn’t much different than this year’s schedule, only with more division teams obviously as each conference goes from having three five-team divisions to two seven/eight-team divisions.

What is different from this year’s schedule obviously is the non-conference schedule, which now includes a home-and-home with every team out West.  To sum up the math for us tri-staters:

-30 division games (five against two teams, four against five others)
-24 conference games (three against other conference teams)
-28 non-conference games (home-and-home with every team out West)

Out West the math is slightly different, given there’s only fourteen teams there but the principle remains the same.  Cynics may, and will say that this format is only a placeholder until expansion.  Perhaps that’s true.  I try not to be one of those fans that has an automatic knee-jerk reaction to anything new the NHL does is bad.  Really, division playoffs aren’t new, although I’m just young enough that I never experienced it as a fan. My biggest fault with this system though – in addition to the inequality of conferences (would it really have been that hard to keep Columbus out West, have fifteen teams in every conference and give every team a truly equal opportunity to make the playoffs?), is the fact that it isn’t really true division playoffs anyway.  In theory, under last year’s point totals the Devils could have won the ‘Northeast’ playoff bracket while five teams would have made the playoffs from what I call the Western division (Vancouver, Phoenix, San Jose, LA and Calgary – taking the place of Detroit).

It seems to me as if the NHL tried to have it both ways with this playoff format.  They wanted to guarantee a majority of division matchups in the first two rounds without actually locking in division matchups for every series.  Granted, having four teams in a division be locked into the playoffs would cause screaming and yelling from fifth-place teams in other divisions that have more points than a fourth-place team.  In that sense, this format does ensure the top eight teams make the playoffs.  Still, instead of a relatively simple ‘division winners and the rest of the top eight make it’ which it currently is, this format will be a lot more complicated to explain to the so-called casual fan the NHL keeps trying in vein to hook.  And by the time most people get it, it’ll probably change again presuming there is expansion soon as has been speculated.

As far as the schedule goes, there are pluses and minues to being able to see every team every season.  Stating the obvious, it is an NBA-like schedule and that’s the league the NHL’s most often compared to since the seasons have overlapping months with the exact same game length for regular season and playoffs.  Part of me won’t mind the variety of seeing every team, and part of me will wonder why we only have 16-18 total games against the Flyers, Rangers, Pens and Islanders in a given 82-game season.  Perhaps fewer division games will compensate for the fact that the first two rounds of the playoffs are going to be heavily weighted in division.

Everyone wants to speculate what this means in regards to competition, and obviously our division – already the toughest in the league – got even tougher adding Carolina, Washington and even a Columbus team which is already improving under new president John Davidson.  It will be nice to have the Caps back as someone who didn’t quite grow up with the Patrick Division as I wasn’t a big hockey fan in the late ’80’s but I’m certainly familiar with it, and Carolina has a built-in division rivalry with the Caps and playoff rivalry with us.  Columbus might be able to develop a rivalry with Pittsburgh in time (among other teams) and certainly there’ll be a bit of a rivalry with the Rangers with the Rick Nash factor, but right now they seem a bit miscast in this division, even if travel will be better for them.

Then again, the league is tougher as a whole.  Parity just gets more pronounced each season and this year you could probably count the number of teams on one hand that are out of the postseason mix at this point.  It’ll be interesting to see how it all shakes out.