NHL Will Re-Format the Format

Goodbye and good riddance...

NHL plans to ditch unbalanced schedule

CHICAGO -- The twain will meet in the NHL next season, after the league decided yesterday to adopt a more balanced schedule between the Eastern and Western Conferences.

However, after their meeting, the NHL governors did not agree on how the 82-game schedule will be changed, only that the current one, which emphasizes play within the divisions, will be scrapped.

A decision will be made at the governors' next meeting in late November and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said two options are being considered.

One choice is to drop one of the eight divisional games and make that a game against a team from the other conference. Under that proposal, teams from opposing conferences would travel to each city every other year. The current schedule has teams playing only teams from one division in the opposing conference every year, which means stars such as Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins are seen in western cities once every three years.

The second choice will drop the divisional games to six and have full interconference play with a home-and-home series between every team.

I'd vote for option #2 if I could.