There's been a lot of ink spilled (er, characters typed) about the pending re-alignment of the NHL.  It's an interesting debate, that's for sure.  The NHL is a massive league, with a long history, and cannot simply schedule a season the way they do in Sweden, for example, where every team plays each other an equal number of times (12 teams play each other 5 times for 55 games).  To fill an 82 game schedule in a 30 team league, the schedule will be unbalanced.  But that doesn't mean the NHL can't reach a better balance between local interest and league wide competitiveness. 

Even with the move of Atlanta, an eastern team, to Winnipeg, a 'western' team, there remains an imbalance in the NHL geographically.  16 of 30 teams are based in the Eastern Time Zone, and the current conference format means that teams based in the East have a great advantage economically, and some would argue competitively, when it comes to travel.  You can't necessarily level the playing field to such an extent where distance becomes a non-factor, and you don't want to eliminate completely the traditional and local rivalries that already exist.  There is no perfect system, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to take a shot at this.

The NHL is currently a 30 team league.  I have no doubt that expansion beyond 30 will occur at some point in time, but for now 30 teams have existed for 11 years, and with the current global economic situation and NHL economic situation 30 seems like a comfortable number for upwards of another decade.  Having 30 teams makes the NHL, along with the affiliated 30 team AHL, the largest single major hockey league on the planet.  Since we're at 30 teams, and don't forsee beyond 30 teams for a while, it is best to work with that number to divide up the divisions evenly.  That means the current six division format stays in place to facilitate easy regional rivalries.  But to alleviate the issue of travel, where the determination of what conference a team plays in could determine the team's very viability (hello, Columbus), I'm proposing a bit of outside the box thinking here:  it's time to Ditch the idea of conferences altogether, be they geographically or economically determined. 

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I try not to comment too much on the NHL on this site, but the rule changes they bring have a profound impact on the game itself, so it is quite a relevant topic.  I know safety is a huge concern at all levels of hockey, but I can't honestly fathom how this rule is being considered.

"The most flagellant situation for me is one where a forward makes a hard pivot and comes right back into the track of the defenseman. He's gotta finish that hit and when he does sometimes that player is propelled like a billiard ball," said Burke.

"Give the defenseman the chance to go in there with him [and] avoid a potentially catastrophic injury."

Brian Burke

So, to begin with, we're blaming forwards for putting themselves in vulnerable positions to draw a penalty, claiming the defensemen have no time to stop the hit from behind from occuring.  Yet somehow, a defenseman is going to have time to change his action and put his arms around the forward and put him softly into the boards in a preventative situation?  This is, well, lunacy.  Either the defenseman has time to react to the new situation or he doesn't.  If he doesn't, the dangerous hit will occur.  If he does, then he can stop the hit from happening, and if he refuses to stop, he's at fault and should be given a major penalty for boarding or hitting from behind. 

It's ridiculous to think that this rule is necessary if that is the case.  If he can't stop to prevent the hit, but he can move his arms from a checking motion to a hugging one, something is seriously wrong with this player's co-ordination skills.  I mean, I could understand if this was me we're talking about, but we're talking professionals and high level junior prospects here. 

This rule just seems illogical, and the premise behind it, that the game has seen an increase in serious injury since the last major tweaking of the rules in 2005, is just based on hearsay without any actual numbers presented to back it up (Please, SHOW ME SOME NUMBERS).  If the NHL wants to make huge changes to the sport, they should be consulting with the greater hockey community a lot more. 

Still, if the defenseman only feels he has a choice to hit the player from behind or bear hug him, I hope he chooses to bear hug him.  That's a two minute minor.  The other option should be an automatic five minute major and a game misconduct, with possible disciplinary action taken.  If the d-man truly has time to make a logical decision (when they often claim they don't and blame the forward for putting themselves in danger), that would be the right move to make.  But such a scenario should realistically never come into play. 

The IIHF World Rankings are talked about a decent amount on here, and I know they aren't the most popular way of looking at hockey strength.  The IIHF is handicapped a lot due to the unpredictable nature of the men's international competition that it has at its disposal, but they do themselves no favours by treating the World Championships at equal value to the Olympics, the world's true best on best men's competition.  That said, what if it were applied to something that really was best on best, all the time?  Would it bear out an acceptable result?

Well, as a bit of an experiment, I decided to test this theory...  so here are the NHL Team Rankings, 2011 edition.  I'm grading teams the way the IIHF does it:  the most recent year counts the most, so it is worth full value.  2009-10 counts at 75% value, 2008-09 at 50% value, and 2007-08 at 25% value.  Is this acceptable?  You be the judge:

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If this were posted on SBN's Edmonton Oilers blog, The Copper and Blue, it'd have the title "quote that may only interest me", but here it is...

"Every junior team has a goalie coach. In some cases, midget teams have a goalie coach. All those coaches try to teach a technique. We’re taking the athleticism away from all our kids. We’re turning them into robots," Prendergast stated. "We’ve turned the position into a job rather than just let them play. Dominik Hasek had no technique. Tim Thomas has no technique. We’ve gotten to the point where teaching the position has gotten in the way."

- Hockey Canada's Chief Scout Kevin Prendergrast in The Globe & Mail

Bashing Canada's development programs for a lack of elite goaltending prospects has kind of replaced the old bashing of Sweden for lacking star offensive forwards from about 2002-07.  There are cycles, and Hockey Canada goaltending consultant Ron Tugnutt concedes that in this article as well.  There is no doubt that the advantage Canada once had in goal has largely dissipated, but that's kind of the nature of the position itself:  you can only dress one goalie, so therefore its the easiest advantage to negate on a team. 

Wanting to improve a position is great, and asking questions about the current development program in the country is valid when doing so.  But to say that Canada is over-coaching their goaltenders is quite an odd assertion to make.  One of the reasons Finland gained an advantage was the implementation of a structured, centralized program based on coaching certification and elite goaltending camps.  From an article on Goalie Pro from last summer by Larry Sadler:

The secret to this success dates back to 1985. At that time the Finnish Ice Hockey Federation (FIHF) introduced a standardized certification program for goaltending coaches. This program virtually provided each goaltender on every competitive team with a goaltender coach who taught the same basic fundamentals in goaltending. This started with goaltenders 8 years of age! This program has continued to the present day.

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Hockey has grown substantially in the United States over the past couple of decades, to the point where in nearly every state, there is some high level hockey to enjoy as a fan.  Not all major metropolitan areas enjoy this, but at least on the state by state level, its very close.

But despite these advancements, there are some very notable places without high quality hockey.

First off, some basic definitions:  The United States government has different levels of designated census areas to consider.  These are areas with common economic, social, media and even scholastic ties.  A simple example would be to consider a major city, with its nearby suburbs or bedroom communities.  For example, Los Angeles is really just a city of 3.8 million people, but its growth has helped boom neighbouring cities like Anaheim, Long Beach, and Riverside.  Los Angeles has a defined metropolitan area, but with Riverside (city population of 304k, metro population of 1.5m, dubbed the "Inland Empire"), it combines to form a Combined Statistical Area, an area with more than one major hub, but closely related.  San Jose and San Francisco provide another example, as do Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia in Washington. 

The definitions aren't always exact...  but just think of it in terms of 'greater region' and you've got the gist of it.  The definitions work the other way as well:  there are micropolitan statistical areas for smaller centres, while rural areas are defined by counties.

The largest metropolis in the USA without a NHL franchise is Houston, at just over 6 million people.  It is the ninth largest population area in the United States, and the largest without a team in every one of the four major professional sports leagues.  They do have an AHL franchise, the Houston Aeros, who have been very successful, using a moniker that was used in the old World Hockey Association, a team that once featured Gordie Howe with his two sons, Marty and Mark. 

The second largest metropolis without a NHL team?  Well, that now belongs to Atlanta at 5.6m.  With now two failed big league franchises (and Houston realistically with one, as the WHA was a legitimate top professional circuit), Atlanta hockey fans are now facing a tough new reality.  The only high level hockey option in the area are the Gwinnett Gladiators of the ECHL, located in the suburbs.  Over the past twenty years, amateur hockey has grown quite noticeably in Georgia, but there is reason to be concerned about its immediate future without the flagship franchise around as a promotional tool.

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Over the next few weeks, I'll be talking a lot about the professional game in North America.  I thought it'd be interesting to first look at the numbers of registered hockey players in each state of the union, as I think its relevant to the conversation here.  I'd love to have more data...  such as how many hockey arenas are in use, by state and urban area, but I'm going to use the numbers that I do have right now to provide some context.  These numbers were posted by Chris Peters over at The United States of Hockey, which were part of the inspiration for this whole project (though I had collected a lot of the information over the past couple of years). 

Chris gave the numbers in a state-by-state rundown, simply posting the totals from 1990-91 and comparing them to the numbers in 2009-10, and giving a growth rate percentage.  To give an idea of the presence of 'hockey culture' in the state, I've compared these numbers to the state populations according to US Census data from 1990 and 2010.  Admittedly, the vast majority of the data I took from Wikipedia...  so if you notice any errors compared to what you see from the original government sources, let me know. 

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I've spent a decent amount of time on here talking about the European hockey model, but this site isn't exclusively about European hockey by any means.  You can review my look at the top European leagues from last summer here....  the teams are not all the same, but pretty close, and I'll do previews for each league as the summer rolls on.

The other major professional hockey system is located, of course, in North America.  The leagues may be familiar to you all, and I'm not going to do a basic rundown on them like I did with the European leagues...  but I'm going to look at the totality of the system, the entertainment options for fans in various markets, and see how that measures up with the game's growth at the grassroots level. For more on that last point, check out the United States of Hockey's post(s) on growth by state in amateur hockey for the past 20 years.

As an introduction, here is a bit of a rundown on how the leagues stack up:

National Hockey League (NHL):  30 teams, 23 in USA (in 16 states plus D.C.), 7 in Canada (in 5 provinces).  The top league in the world, with players from all the top countries, based on a franchise system controlled by the headquarters in New York City.

American Hockey League (AHL):  30 teams, 26 in USA (in 15 states), 4 in Canada (in 4 provinces).  The only 'AAA' minor league in North America.  Its the top developmental league for the NHL, with a majority of players contracted to NHL teams.  It has a more heavily North American distribution of talent than the NHL, though relatively young European players (aged 20-24) do come and play in this league.  Generally comparable in talent level to Finland's SM-Liiga or Switzerland's NLA. The league's head office is in Springfield, Mass., and like the NHL, it is operated on a franchise system, and franchise relocation is quite common.

ECHL:  20 teams, all in the USA, in 16 states.  Billed as the top 'AA' hockey league in the country, the ECHL has a pretty fluid relationship with both the NHL and AHL, with most NHL and AHL teams having ECHL affiliates.  The league has undergone a lot of changes, rebranding itself simply as the 'E' after absorbing the West Coast Hockey League in 2003.  The league is almost exclusively made up of Canadian and American players, and the head office is based in Princeton, NJ.

Central Hockey League (CHL):  15 teams, all in the USA, in 11 states.  Also considered a 'AA' minor league, the CHL runs a bit more independently, with origins in the old Western Professional Hockey League, which brought pro hockey to Texas in the 1990s.  There are still four teams based in Texas, but the league also has reach in the mid-West, with teams from South Dakota to Indiana.  There are a few more Europeans in this league than the E, but again at this level we're looking at a very strong North American contingent.  The current head office is in Tempe, Arizona.

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