June 2, 2011
My version of the new NHL
I’m not much of a sports fan. About the only time I get interested is when a Canadian team has a shot at the Stanley Cup or when Canada’s men’s hockey team is playing for a gold medal.
Or if the NHL moves a team to Canada.
This combines nicely with my love of geography, because with Atlanta moving to Winnipeg the league will have to be realigned. There’s no way you can have a team in western Canada playing in the NHL’s southeast division with the likes of Florida and Carolina.
So listen up, NHL, and take a look at the Google Map I created with teams moved around so that each is in its logical division, using geography as the main criterion.
Winnipeg would be placed in the northwest division along with Calgary, Edmonton, Colorado and Minnesota. Vancouver — a city on the Pacific Ocean — would be bumped into the Pacific division. This in turn would allow Dallas, which is nowhere near the Pacific, to move to the central division to be with more natural rivals — Nashville, St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit.
The tricky part is keeping a balance between eastern and western conferences. After all, if Winnipeg is added to the west, then a team currently in the west must move to the east.
Even trickier, is the fact that the two easternmost teams in the west are Detroit and Columbus — and they’re virtually on the same longitude. As it turns out, Columbus is slightly more eastern. This is a good thing, because I’m sure Detroit fans would rather stay with old-time rival Chicago.
And so with Columbus we finally find a team to replace Atlanta in the southeast. Technically, Philadelphia is a titch further south than Columbus, but it seems a shame to break up the current pairing with their Pennsylvania rival in Pittsburgh.
So there you have it. No need to thank me, Gary Bettman. It’s all in a day’s work here at newsonaut.