Giving a Puck

It's about time.

I know many of you don't care a whit about the National Hockey League, but it's . So when they make big news, it's something we can all get excited about.

So, when the league announced last night that it would realign itself for next season, well, it was met with glee.

(Now if only we can avoid any pesky labor problems this coming summer.)

Gone are the two conferences with teams spread far and wide across the time zones. In are four "conferences," where everyone can pretty much stay close to home more often.

Also gone are the days when you may or may not see a team from the other conference in a given year. The schedule had been set up to favor division and conference opponents. So for the Kings and Ducks, that meant they would play Pacific Division rival Dallas (decidedly not on the Pacific) six times a year (thrice in Dallas) and teams such as Detroit and Columbus (also in the Western Conference, three time zones away) four times a year.

Which meant that they would only be guaranteed to play a team from the Eastern Conference once a season (sometimes twice). Which meant popular teams such as Montreal, Boston and the New York Rangers may not have traveled west of Chicago more than once per year.

Now, every team will visit every road location at least once. Which means all the east coast transplants will have the chance to see their favorite team in LA and Anaheim each year -- not waiting to see if maybe they'll come this year.

All this was needed thanks to Atlanta failing as an NHL market for the second time (once more and they get a toaster), and watching their franchise move to Winnipeg. The league left the team in its old division (the Southeast) with teams in Florida and Washington DC. And if there's one thing teams in the east don't like, it's long trips for division games.

Thus, the overhaul.

It's not perfect. There's the problem that two of the conferences feature eight teams and two feature seven (and the two sevens are both on the east coast). Of course, that problem may be mitigated when the Phoenix ownership situation is sorted out.

But overall, it's a good fix. Better than staying with what we had and just changing the conference of two teams (Detroit was the popular choice to go east, which upset all the west teams who had rivalries with the Red Wings).

And it brings the playoffs back into those smaller geographic rivalries -- which was supposed to be the point of the current scheduling system. Create and grow rivalries.

But real rivalries are never borne until the playoffs. And now we'll get them.

We may finally get the chance to see the Kings and Ducks meet in the playoffs. A real battle with something on the line rather than pride at winning some corporate sponsored regular season series.

Bring it on.

(OK, done talking about hockey. Back to more serious topics again soon.)