Look, this imperfect realignment plan the NHL and NHLPA have adopted for the next three years won’t be as injurious to the sport as the one the MLBPA pushed on baseball — honestly, interleague games played under different rules every day? — but it sure isn’t the utopian landscape the folks running the show like to suggest, either.
There is no doubt franchises in Dallas, Detroit, Columbus, Winnipeg, Colorado and Minnesota benefit from changes that create divisions defined, for the most part, by time zones. There is no doubt in supporting the four-division plan hatched in theory quite some time ago by commissioner Gary Bettman (and well before the Thrashers fled Atlanta for Winnipeg), the owners of these clubs served their own interests and the interests of their customers.
But that accounts for 20 percent of the league, which means, if I can correctly recall math lessons taught at P.S. 87 by Miss Feldman, more than enough of the remaining 80 percent of the league’s owners signed on for a system that is of no benefit to their respective franchises or, most critically, to their own respective constituencies.
Nothing is more preposterous than pretending this structure benefits the Lightning and Panthers because of a few extra visits a year by the Canadiens, Maple Leafs and Red Wings (and fewer from the Rangers, Flyers and Penguins). Travel will be murderous, as it will be for the Predators, too, by the way.
Tampa Bay’s economic issue is not attendance-related. It’s a gate-receipts matter. Realignment can’t address that. And if Florida’s success is dependent upon a marketing campaign based upon its opponents, well, the move to Quebec can’t come quickly enough.
There was no reason, none whatsoever, for any franchise in the East (other than Winnipeg, of course) to support this realignment. Every team will travel many more miles. Every team’s schedule will feature fewer games against competitors for playoff spots and more against teams whose outcomes will produce diluted meaning in the standings.
There will be more dead spots in the schedule than at any time in three decades, since the NHL played a balanced schedule in 1979-80 and 1980-81 with a 1-16 playoff seeding structure. There will be more soft tickets in more Eastern Conference cities than in years, and honestly, does anyone think the good folks of Edmonton and Calgary will flock to the rink to see the Panthers or Sabres (or, for that matter, the Rangers if they’re terrible)?
It is, as usual, the big-market fans — whose money drives the NHL economy — who will pay for a system contrary to their own interests. It has been that way through the lockouts, and it is now that way regarding realignment. Taken for granted, as always.
The Rangers never have played the Devils fewer than five times in a season since the club relocated to New Jersey in 1982, playing six or more 20 times. The same applies to Rangers-Islanders, Rangers-Flyers and all permutations beginning a season earlier.
Now, though, there will be seasons in which these teams play just four times, in which these teams come to the Garden (and to Long Island, New Jersey and Philadelphia) just twice. There will be fewer Rangers-Penguins games, fewer Flyers-Penguins games, fewer Bruins-Canadiens matches, but hey, more of the Avalanche, Flames and League Ward Coyotes.
Only months after the end of the lockout, fans already are being hit with ticket price increases — at least that’s true of Rangers’ season subscribers who face increases for next season. Never mind the inferior product, never mind the team might miss the playoffs — prices are going up.
Rangers fans will pay more money, less of which can be spent on improving the team and more of which will go into the owner’s pockets because of the reduced cap, for fewer games they care about and more they won’t care about all that much at all.
Seems like a fair deal to me.
In a season in which four teams are averaging fewer than 2.3 goals per game — when just three teams in the seven seasons of the Between Owners’ Lockouts II and III Era scored so little — both proportionately smaller equipment for goaltenders and proportionately bigger nets for shooters should be on the agenda when NHL general managers meet this month and the league competition committee convenes following the season, you betcha!
There is nothing more sacrosanct about the 24-square foot net than the bare-faced, 5-foot-8 goaltenders that once guarded them or the wooden sticks that once shot pucks into them.
You know what was sacrosanct? Guy Lafleur flying down the wing and blasting home a slap shot from 50 feet — just ask Don Cherry or Gilles Gilbert (or maybe don’t). That’s gone to history now, for more reasons than the dimensions of the goaltenders’ equipment and of the nets, but surely shooters should have something to aim at besides the shins and ankles of opponents diving in front of them.
* So Derek Stepan and Ryan Callahan, not only teammates but linemates for Team USA in the 2014 Olympics, wouldn’t you say?
Our teams’ all-time No. 21s: 1. Brent Sutter, Islanders; 2. Camille Henry, Rangers; 3. Sergei Zubov, Rangers; 4. Randy McKay, Devils; 5. Pete Stemkowski, Rangers. Honorable Mention: Butch Goring (for 12 weeks and the first Cup), Islanders. Dishonorable Mention: (Dread) Scott Fraser, Rangers.