Ok, so I started to read this post thinking that perhaps you would have gave some resoning to your realignment/contraction decisions. Unfortunately you didn’t.
Just a few quick points:
Plan 1 - Did you just feel like getting rid of 4 Canadian teams? Why the disparity in the conferences with 15 teams in the East and only 11 in the West?
Plan 2 - You want to have NJ play outside the Rangers Division? It is literally a 10 minute drive from Midtown Manhattan to the Meadowlands (w/o heavy traffic that is). That makes no sense. I have no idea where you are posting from but do you realize the rivalry between these teams?
Plan 3 - Now you want to take NJ AND Philly out of the Rangers Division? My guess is you wanted to make this as geographically close as possible but NYC is closer to Philly than it is to Buffalo. The Rangers, Islanders, Devils and Flyers should always remain in the same division. The farthest trip is about a 3 hour ride from Philly to Long Island.
I would gladly look at this again after you gave some reasoning to your decisions. Also, I was going loopy trying to figure out which teams you were eliminating in each plan.
With less teams, will the 82 game schedule still be used? How many times will a team play teams inside and outside their divisions? Will 16 teams still qualify for the playoffs?
I only quickly looked at this from my perspective. If you decide to give your reasons I will try to look at this from and NHL perspective as well.
Plan I: Eliminate Westen Canadian teams
Plan II: Eliminate warm weather teams that originated there
Plan III: Do Plan I AND II. No good reason for disparity, merely left tems in conference.
Plan 1
Teams dropping: Ottawa Senators, Nashville Predators, Vancouver Canucks, Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers
So you’re killing 4 of the 6 Canadian teams because…? Also 4 of these are in the West and you aren’t rebalancing the conferences. Plan 2
Teams dropping: Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers, Atlanta Thrashers, Nashville Predators, Colorado Avalanche, L.A. Kings, Ahaniem Ducks, San Jose Sharks
Here you kill 8 of the 30 teams in the league and most of them are expansion teams. Don’t you like the new teams? Colorado recently won the Cup and you think they should disband the team? Plan 3
Teams dropping: Ottawa Senators, Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers, Atlanta Thrashers, Nashville Predators, Vancouver Canucks, Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, L.A. Kings, Ahaniem Ducks, San Jose Sharks
Here you’re killing 11 of the 30 teams and combining your Plans. We’re dropping Canadian teams & expansion teams in this scenario.
Sorry, all of these ideas suck unless you can come up with some valid reasons for cutting the league by 16-36%.
Nashville survives Plan I, moveed into Eastern Conference. Didn’t mean to Kill off Avs in Plan II (oops!). Why I killed off Canadaian teams: minimal tradition, in poor markets, lousy economy. Why I killed off warm weather teams: The idea of teams in place that NEVER see snow is odd to me.