2010-11 NHL Season Thread

[Sport]

I was thinking about this last night while watching the Jackets lose to the wild (3-2, if you were wondering). Why does the NHL need to have divisions? The 8 best teams make the playoffs in a conference, but these teams aren't playing the same schedule. The central division is tough and one team is not going to come out of it as a playoff team (probably the Blue Jackets), but it's a harder road to the postseason if you're in the central than if you're in the pacific. The division you're in could be the difference between being in the playoffs and being out of it. Also, the league needs more cross-conference games in the home and home format. Pittsburgh is the closest NHL city to Columbus, but they play once or twice a year and the Penguins aren't guaranteed to come to Columbus in a given year.

what they should do is eliminate divisions, add 4 games to the schedule, you play everyone in your conference 4 times and you play everybody in the opposite conference twice. Problem solved.

[infrared41]

I was thinking about this last night while watching the Jackets lose to the wild (3-2, if you were wondering). Why does the NHL need to have divisions? The 8 best teams make the playoffs in a conference, but these teams aren't playing the same schedule. The central division is tough and one team is not going to come out of it as a playoff team (probably the Blue Jackets), but it's a harder road to the postseason if you're in the central than if you're in the pacific. The division you're in could be the difference between being in the playoffs and being out of it. Also, the league needs more cross-conference games in the home and home format. Pittsburgh is the closest NHL city to Columbus, but they play once or twice a year and the Penguins aren't guaranteed to come to Columbus in a given year.

what they should do is eliminate divisions, add 4 games to the schedule, you play everyone in your conference 4 times and you play everybody in the opposite conference twice. Problem solved.

I don;t know enough about the NHL to say if there's a problem with your proposal but I like the sounds of it. At least I'm guaranteed one Rangers game a season that way.

[Eye]

Why not just do what the NBA does? Play all teams in the same conference four times (I think you play one or two teams three times), and all teams in other conference two times.

[OMMF]

I was thinking about this last night while watching the Jackets lose to the wild (3-2, if you were wondering). Why does the NHL need to have divisions? The 8 best teams make the playoffs in a conference, but these teams aren't playing the same schedule. The central division is tough and one team is not going to come out of it as a playoff team (probably the Blue Jackets), but it's a harder road to the postseason if you're in the central than if you're in the pacific. The division you're in could be the difference between being in the playoffs and being out of it. Also, the league needs more cross-conference games in the home and home format. Pittsburgh is the closest NHL city to Columbus, but they play once or twice a year and the Penguins aren't guaranteed to come to Columbus in a given year.

what they should do is eliminate divisions, add 4 games to the schedule, you play everyone in your conference 4 times and you play everybody in the opposite conference twice. Problem solved.

So you want the closest team in the league (Pittsburgh) to play Columbus more often but you want the closest teams in the conference to come less often (eliminating divisions)? Just want to make sure I am understanding it correctly.

[Sport]

I was thinking about this last night while watching the Jackets lose to the wild (3-2, if you were wondering). Why does the NHL need to have divisions? The 8 best teams make the playoffs in a conference, but these teams aren't playing the same schedule. The central division is tough and one team is not going to come out of it as a playoff team (probably the Blue Jackets), but it's a harder road to the postseason if you're in the central than if you're in the pacific. The division you're in could be the difference between being in the playoffs and being out of it. Also, the league needs more cross-conference games in the home and home format. Pittsburgh is the closest NHL city to Columbus, but they play once or twice a year and the Penguins aren't guaranteed to come to Columbus in a given year.

what they should do is eliminate divisions, add 4 games to the schedule, you play everyone in your conference 4 times and you play everybody in the opposite conference twice. Problem solved.

So you want the closest team in the league (Pittsburgh) to play Columbus more often but you want the closest teams in the conference to come less often (eliminating divisions)? Just want to make sure I am understanding it correctly.

well when you put it like that...

Yes, that's what I want. It would eliminate 8 games against the teams currently in the division. I can live with that if it means that we're guaranteed to see the stars from the Eastern conference.

[STL FANATIC]

I was thinking about this last night while watching the Jackets lose to the wild (3-2, if you were wondering). Why does the NHL need to have divisions? The 8 best teams make the playoffs in a conference, but these teams aren't playing the same schedule. The central division is tough and one team is not going to come out of it as a playoff team (probably the Blue Jackets), but it's a harder road to the postseason if you're in the central than if you're in the pacific. The division you're in could be the difference between being in the playoffs and being out of it. Also, the league needs more cross-conference games in the home and home format. Pittsburgh is the closest NHL city to Columbus, but they play once or twice a year and the Penguins aren't guaranteed to come to Columbus in a given year.

what they should do is eliminate divisions, add 4 games to the schedule, you play everyone in your conference 4 times and you play everybody in the opposite conference twice. Problem solved.

The reason there are divisions is because the schedule used to be imbalanced (still is, not as much), and the division winner gets rewarded with a 1, 2, or 3 seed in the playoffs. The other 5 teams essentially were wild cards.

Now that they changed the schedule to de-emphasize division games, divisions seem less important.

Frankly, it ticks me off though. I HATE HATE HATE the new schedule. I don't care anything about the Eastern conference and would have ZERO problem playing less or no games against them. I favor a schedule in which you play your division rivals a ton and the other teams in the conference a couple of times. But I can't seem to find a single person who agrees with me. Everyone else seems to like seeing the other players in the league. I get it, but I have no feelings about those teams. I'd rather play the teams I sports "hate".

[rams80]

I was thinking about this last night while watching the Jackets lose to the wild (3-2, if you were wondering). Why does the NHL need to have divisions? The 8 best teams make the playoffs in a conference, but these teams aren't playing the same schedule. The central division is tough and one team is not going to come out of it as a playoff team (probably the Blue Jackets), but it's a harder road to the postseason if you're in the central than if you're in the pacific. The division you're in could be the difference between being in the playoffs and being out of it. Also, the league needs more cross-conference games in the home and home format. Pittsburgh is the closest NHL city to Columbus, but they play once or twice a year and the Penguins aren't guaranteed to come to Columbus in a given year.

what they should do is eliminate divisions, add 4 games to the schedule, you play everyone in your conference 4 times and you play everybody in the opposite conference twice. Problem solved.

The reason there are divisions is because the schedule used to be imbalanced (still is, not as much), and the division winner gets rewarded with a 1, 2, or 3 seed in the playoffs. The other 5 teams essentially were wild cards.

Now that they changed the schedule to de-emphasize division games, divisions seem less important.

Frankly, it ticks me off though. I HATE HATE HATE the new schedule. I don't care anything about the Eastern conference and would have ZERO problem playing less or no games against them. I favor a schedule in which you play your division rivals a ton and the other teams in the conference a couple of times. But I can't seem to find a single person who agrees with me. Everyone else seems to like seeing the other players in the league. I get it, but I have no feelings about those teams. I'd rather play the teams I sports "hate".

But losing to Detroit gets old. As does beating Columbus. And every combination therein. This is a 30 team league, why should we see the same 4 ing teams all the time over an 80+ game season? I grew to "hate" the rest of the Central Division during the unbalanced era, but it wasn't sports "hate", it was the "I'm sick and ing tired of the very sight of those 4 teams" "hate" and why, WHY? can't the Blues play anyone else on a TV game? I want to see new and different teams.

[OMMF]

I was thinking about this last night while watching the Jackets lose to the wild (3-2, if you were wondering). Why does the NHL need to have divisions? The 8 best teams make the playoffs in a conference, but these teams aren't playing the same schedule. The central division is tough and one team is not going to come out of it as a playoff team (probably the Blue Jackets), but it's a harder road to the postseason if you're in the central than if you're in the pacific. The division you're in could be the difference between being in the playoffs and being out of it. Also, the league needs more cross-conference games in the home and home format. Pittsburgh is the closest NHL city to Columbus, but they play once or twice a year and the Penguins aren't guaranteed to come to Columbus in a given year.

what they should do is eliminate divisions, add 4 games to the schedule, you play everyone in your conference 4 times and you play everybody in the opposite conference twice. Problem solved.

The reason there are divisions is because the schedule used to be imbalanced (still is, not as much), and the division winner gets rewarded with a 1, 2, or 3 seed in the playoffs. The other 5 teams essentially were wild cards.

Now that they changed the schedule to de-emphasize division games, divisions seem less important.

Frankly, it ticks me off though. I HATE HATE HATE the new schedule. I don't care anything about the Eastern conference and would have ZERO problem playing less or no games against them. I favor a schedule in which you play your division rivals a ton and the other teams in the conference a couple of times. But I can't seem to find a single person who agrees with me. Everyone else seems to like seeing the other players in the league. I get it, but I have no feelings about those teams. I'd rather play the teams I sports "hate".

I think a decade or so ago, you would have a hard time finding people agree with you. But with games available on TV, online and on demand, I don't think not being able to see other teams is a problem. It is better to see them in person but I don't think it makes that much of a difference. I am no less a Bruins fan because they only come close to Seattle no more than twice a year.

As a WHL fan, I like the fact that the league emphasizes regional and divisional rivalries. You want to talk about an unbalanced schedule. Seattle plays Portland 12 times, Everett 10 times, Spokane and Tri City 8 times. Those are all divisional opponents. Against the other division in the same conference, Seattle plays those teams 4 times. Against the other conference, Seattle plays each team once, one division at home, the other on the road. But that's just Seattle. Spokane sacrifices a couple games against conference opponents to play Kootenay of the Eastern Conference more often. All the Canadian teams play each other twice, once at home and once on the road.

[RedRenesis]

I was thinking about this last night while watching the Jackets lose to the wild (3-2, if you were wondering). Why does the NHL need to have divisions? The 8 best teams make the playoffs in a conference, but these teams aren't playing the same schedule. The central division is tough and one team is not going to come out of it as a playoff team (probably the Blue Jackets), but it's a harder road to the postseason if you're in the central than if you're in the pacific. The division you're in could be the difference between being in the playoffs and being out of it. Also, the league needs more cross-conference games in the home and home format. Pittsburgh is the closest NHL city to Columbus, but they play once or twice a year and the Penguins aren't guaranteed to come to Columbus in a given year.

what they should do is eliminate divisions, add 4 games to the schedule, you play everyone in your conference 4 times and you play everybody in the opposite conference twice. Problem solved.

The reason there are divisions is because the schedule used to be imbalanced (still is, not as much), and the division winner gets rewarded with a 1, 2, or 3 seed in the playoffs. The other 5 teams essentially were wild cards.

Now that they changed the schedule to de-emphasize division games, divisions seem less important.

Frankly, it ticks me off though. I HATE HATE HATE the new schedule. I don't care anything about the Eastern conference and would have ZERO problem playing less or no games against them. I favor a schedule in which you play your division rivals a ton and the other teams in the conference a couple of times. But I can't seem to find a single person who agrees with me. Everyone else seems to like seeing the other players in the league. I get it, but I have no feelings about those teams. I'd rather play the teams I sports "hate".

Over the last several years I've pretty much been in McCarthy's camp about playing every team twice a year. But the one thing about a division heavy schedule I would like to see would be the return of the divisional playoffs that got scrapped in the early 90's. In order to make that work though the NHL would have to contract at least two teams, which given the state of the league would be an improvement.

[Lee.]

Three Divisions. Ten teams each. Top 16 overall make the playoffs, standard playoff ladder.

There's your NHL

[Still MIGHTY]

Three Divisions. Ten teams each. Top 16 overall make the playoffs, standard playoff ladder.

There's your NHL

Geographic divisons? (West/Central/East or North/Central/South) or Random divisions?

[Lee.]

West/Central/East. 4 games against teams in your own division, 2 against teams in the other 2, and another 4 games against "traditional" or playoff rivals.

80 game season. Done.

[Lee.]

So according to Toronto radio rabble-rouser Bob McCown, Gary Bettman was lobbying pretty hard to take over as commissioner of MLB what with Selig stepping down and all.

He also says that Kasten from the Nats is the heir apparent (continuing MLB's habit of hiring owners with less-than-stellar track records to lead the associations), but what does this say about Bettman as a whole? Other than seeing that his tenure with the NHL is coming to a quick end, and that MLB doesn't want him anywhere near their organization?

Discuss.

[The_Admiral]

I thought Andy MacPhail (F-A-I-L) was supposed to be the commissioner in waiting. Maybe he just thought he was. Darn, I was looking forward to Major League Baseball being "competitive in its division."

What it says about Bettman is that he knows what we all know: the NHL is the bottom of the barrel for sports executives. He'd know, long being the worst commissioner representing the worst owners. You can't blame him for wanting to rise above his station, but it doesn't take a genius to realize (which is fortunate, because Bud probably isn't) that Bettman only "made money for the owners" insofar as he fattened everyone up on expansion fees before cancelling an entire season and signing television deals for a channel nobody gets and a channel that doesn't pay for games, and an unsettling handful of the owners he made money for were or are in prison for various flavors of fraud. One league already imported a commissioner who wasn't of the sport who went on to tank the whole league. Why do it again?

He also probably knows that this Coyotes imbroglio has been a waste of everyone's capital, both financial and personal, and the whole mess has been protracted to the point where it's lose-lose: he either sells to Hulsizer in some public-private deal with Goldwater lawsuit written all over it, or he tucks tail, cashes out to Thomson/Chipman, and loses significant leverage for not just the NHL but every pro league in the realm of Stadium Socialism. Contract extension notwithstanding, one has to believe the longer this drags out, the more likely the league's power brokers (Ilitch, Snyder, Dolan, MLSE, Molson, Hotchkiss, Wirtz, Jacobs) strongarm him into tendering a resignation before he can do any further damage.

[IceCap]

So according to Toronto radio rabble-rouser Bob McCown, Gary Bettman was lobbying pretty hard to take over as commissioner of MLB what with Selig stepping down and all.

He also says that Kasten from the Nats is the heir apparent (continuing MLB's habit of hiring owners with less-than-stellar track records to lead the associations), but what does this say about Bettman as a whole? Other than seeing that his tenure with the NHL is coming to a quick end, and that MLB doesn't want him anywhere near their organization?

Discuss.

Why would any sports league look at the NHL and say "We need the guy who's responsible for that running our organization!" Unless MLB wants to commit ritual suicide, in which case hire him.

I just want the man out of the NHL. What he does afterward is secondary. If he did become MLB Commissionaire, however, it would be entertaining in a "how does he screw this up?" sense. Actually you know what would be interesting? If after the NFL and NFLPA resolve their differences they give Bettman the reigns to that league. See how long he takes to run the most successful sports league in the world into a ditch.

Just get him out of the NHL and hire someone who actually grew up with the game please.

[ElwoodCuse]

but what does this say about Bettman as a whole? Other than seeing that his tenure with the NHL is coming to a quick end, and that MLB doesn't want him anywhere near their organization?

Um, it says that baseball is an old boys' network like few others and wants to keep one of their own in the top spot? I don't see how that is any kind of surprise.

You can hate on him all you want (I don't like everything he's done either) but to the only people whose opinions actually matter (the owners), they see that Bettman tripled league revenues during his tenure.

[BrySmalls]

Who the is Brian Boyle?

Edit: Boogaard finally earned his paycheck with the Rangers by scoring against the Caps.

[Still MIGHTY]

GM Meetings today:

- Hit to the head rulings will stay the same for a while. See if the players adjust or what changes can happen.

- No coach's challenge.

- GMs will monitor shootout/overtime results more closely. See if a change is needed to the OT format. (Format thrown around was 4 mins of 4v4, 4 mins 3v3)

- All-Star game changes may start this season. East vs West would be abolished. Fans would vote on the game's 12 starters. The remaining 36 players would be filled out by the NHL's Hockey Operations department. The selected players would vote on captains and alternates for the teams. Those captains would then draft their team as part of the All-Star weekend.

I'm really interested to see how the ASG format would work out. I don't know how well it would turn out. It kinda changes the dynamic of the game, but then again the actual game doesn't matter. It's just played for the excitement of hte game I guess. It almost seems like theyre trying to make the teams even and increase the competitiveness of the game. I dont know about this.

[Sport]

I kinda like the idea of an all-star game draft. That would be fun TV and no other leagues do anything like it.

[oddball]

Who the is Brian Boyle?

Edit: Boogaard finally earned his paycheck with the Rangers by scoring against the Caps.

Why are you asking who Brian Boyle is? Did he do something wrong? He was a first round draft pick by the Kings out of Boston College where he was a pretty good player there that played center and defense when they were depleted. He was traded to the Rangers at the 2009 Draft for a 2010 3rd rounder. He's got the talent as is evident by his numbers at BC. He's probably a 3rd or 4th line center,but the Kings were in a rebuilding mode and Dean Lombardi has a vision and sometimes you have to move a player to get a draft pick to use for future trades. Actually the Kings used the pick and chose center Jordan Weal from Regina. I like Brian Boyle and was disappointed to see him leave and still follow him and am glad to see him succeed with the Rangers.