New Alignment- Winners and Losers

1) Many are currently discussing the new NHL divisional and playoff format set to become reality next season (if there is a 2012-2013 season). Since, as we discussed last post that Gary Bettman had to shove this plan down several teams' throats, we figured we'd go through who we believe are the biggest winners and losers under this plan.

First the Winners:

• Detroit: Probably the biggest overall winners in the new alignment. The Redwings aren't moving to the Eastern Conference BUT with increased play among the East there will be fewer games on the Pacific time zone reducing their overall time out of their Eastern time zone by 40%!



• Columbus: See above! The Blue jackets along with the Redwings were the 2 teams that lie in the eastern time zone that were playing the most games outside this zone so this new configuration greatly reduces the teams travel



• Nashville: The Preds are a Central time zone team, but this plan prevented a possible move to the soon to be defunct SE division. They get to retain their more natural rivalries they've been growing in the Central the past few years



• Washington: The caps and especially their fans get their X-mas wish and return to the old Patrick Division(with Carolina. jettisoning their Florida 'rivals'. By doing so they probably will have some of the lest amount of travel(other than the 3 NY teams) in the NHL

Next The Losers:

• Florida/Tampa Bay: Already separated by hundreds of miles fro their nearest rivals(Carolina) with this new set up the closest team to Florida suddenly is Boston? I guess someone had to take a hit, but seems odd to have the old NE division remain intact and adding the FLA teams. Their new conference rivals are probably pleased to escape the NE winter with a few extra road trips to the sunshine state! Sorry we don't buy the Canandian Snow birds argument that they will help boost attendance for the Fla teams!



• NY Islanders: Imagine how difficult it will now be for the Isles to make the playoffs. Can anyone see them eclipsing the Pens, Flyers, or Caps any time soon? So that leaves the Rangers(who appear one of the best teams this year) Devils and Hurricanes. Even with the Canes and Devils in lean times its unlikely their management will allow them to stay that way soon, so it will take a small miracle to get them into the post season any time soon



• Colorado: I guess geography is what it, but with the required increased travel East under this plan and having all their divisional/conference opponents in a different time zone the Avalanche will probably have the worst travel itinerary of any NHL team

2) By the way a frequent reader of ours wrote last night to remind us of how far in front of this realignment issue Fauxrumors has been. She reminded me that we wrote back in November of 2007 that the NHL should go to a 7 and 8 team division concept as well as bring back the old or (new) names to honor the past. See it here====>http://newfaux.blogspot.com/2007/11/division-power-rankings.html

Bettman Shows his Muscles in Realignment Fight!

1) Looks like Big Gary got his way last night. We're told that there was "significant arm twisting" by the commissioner in the last 48 hours to convince several owners who were resistant to the large scale changes outlined and released last night. As regular readers know, we did a post yesterday where we believed from talking with our usual good sources that the league was going to sequentially realign the next 2 seasons instead of one big change as we saw occur. So why the change?

2) I believe the biggest enticements were Bettmans commitments to all owners that he can get an even better deal i the next CBA than even the NBA owners got recently. He told the board that he believes an owners favoured 54-46% split as opposed to the current 43-57 split in which the players get the upper hand, thus reducing payrolls roughly 25% across the board. Additionally an extra round of playoffs is likely in the cards as well. The new format will have the top 4 teams in each "conference" play in the first 2 rounds. Opening up a possibility that a team from another conference might fail to make the playoffs even though they have more points than a team that qualified. To ease that problem and to increase revenue/fan interest the league will create a "preliminary round" where the top 2 teams that missed the playoff cut would square off against eachother.

3) The Phoenix issue will solve itself under this plan. (Unless they move to Quebec.) A move to another city west of the Mississippi is easily solved with this format. It reduces travel for the Redwings so their owner is happy. It continues the regionalization (unless you live in Florida) and the associated rivalries. No one will ever be happy with any plan. Already teams are griping with the potential playoff format, and until the Preliminary round is instituted we'll be sure to hear crying from a bubble team or two. The other bit of intrigue left to be determined are the names of these 4 new conferences. We restate our desire to bring back the old names instead of the geographic names that Bettman brought to the NHL. The Patrick, Norris, Smythe, Adams Conferences sound so much better, and give the league a way to differentiate themselves from the bland NBA/NFL names.

UnderAchieving/Over-Paid!?!

1) When we looked at the NHL overall stats sheet the other day it struck us how a few of the more highly paid players were NO where to be found among even the top 20 point producers thus far in the NHL. Its not like this is the first week of the season either. To this point most teams have completed close to a third of their regular season games and the players below while sucking up a vast amount of precious salary cap resources are not producing to the level of their compensation. If this were pre 2005 it wouldn't matter nearly as much, but in today's NHL if a highly compensated star player isn't cutting it its a double whammy to their teams!

• Alex Ovechkin- Salary 9 million Goals: 8 Points: 19 Projected Totals: 26/62




• Eric Staal: Salary: 7.75 mil Goals:5 points 14 Projected Totals: 15/41




• Dany Heatley- 9 million Goals: 7 goals 16 points Projected Totals: 22/50




• Scott Gomez- 7.5 mil Goals: 0 goals points 4. Projected Totals: 0/25(missed 10 games)




• Jarome Iginla- 7 mil Goals 7 Points 15. Projected Totals: 23/49




• Rick Nash- 7.5 mil Goals 8 Points 19 Projected totals: 25/60




• Vincent Lecavalier-10 million Goals: 10 Points: 18 Projected Totals: 34/62




• Henrik Zetterburg-7.75 mil Goals:5 Points 14 Projected Totals: 17/48

2) Those are 8 players, all making in excess of 7-10 million dollars this season. None are on pace to amass more than 62 points. In my opinion if a player is making close to 15-20% of his teams' salary cap allotment, he best be putting up numbers minimally of 40 goals and 90 points. Some of these numbers have to be alarming to their teams. Eric Staal on pace for 15 goals and 40 points? No wonder the Canes are in the toilet. Alex Ovechkin, once the most feared player in the NHL is now no better than an average 2nd line forward projecting 26 goals. Hardly earnig his 9+ million dollar salary. Vincent Lecavalier? Amazing that he was given such an absurd contract when he hasn't put up decent numbers in years, yet he earns more than any other NHLer, despite being on pace to attain a tad over 60 points.

3) We could go through each of these players in addition to several others (like Ovechkin's team mate Alex Semin who is on pace for 18 goals 36 points to go with his 6.7 mil salary) or goalie Robeto Luongo, who's stats hardly match his 6.7 mil salary. The bottom line to all these stats is the fact that most of these players are signed to long term deals. In excess of 5 years and in the case of Ovechkin 12(7 more to go!) Its insanity to sign ANY player beyond 5 years. Goalies (are you listening Mr. Wang?) are especially problematic in giving them long term deals.

Realignment Going to be a 1-2 Punch?

1) From what we can discern from our various contacts in the NHL the league is likely going to plan on a "1-2 punch" in realignment. We're told that an announcement will be forthcoming later this week that Nashville will be moving to the SE division replacing the relocated Winnipeg Jets, who will take the Preds spot in the Central. A quick and easy move, and probably the one that makes the most geographical sense given all the possible choices. It simply was dumb to think about possibly moving Detroit there to make their owner happy

2) However there is the unspoken (other than here) "Elephant in the realignment room" the Phoenix Coyotes. The Yotes, from all we hear are just about ready to be relocated. The NHL has all but given up hope that a deal can be struck in the desert. There really was never a chance given the financial realities there. Only a deep pocketed local (who doesn't exist) who was willing to lose millions could keep them there. So the Board of Governors will have to decide where the team goes(likely East) thus making another realignment necessary.

3) The proposed 'Big change' realignment that would eliminate 1 division in each conference, thus giving one 8 and one 7 team division in each conference will probably be given the go ahead but not announced until next spring or even summer when the Coyotes are officially declared dead. The final decision of whom goes where will ultimately be decided depending if the Yotes go to KC as many surmise, or to Quebec City as many up north would prefer. However there isn't an NHL ready arena yet in Quebec like there is in KC and the move to KC would geographicly be easier to accomidate. The Coyotes would move to the Central and allow the Red Wings to move East where their owner has been "Ilitching" to go for years. Stay tuned folks we're told this is still a fluid situation and one that is giving Mr. Bettman quite the head ache having many owners calling him daily making thier cases of why they want to move where!

Week 9 Results

1) Week 9 is complete. Just when we thought we could turn things around we fall even further back, going 5-7 on the night to bring our 9 week total to 62-51, or a .549 winning %. On the night the road teams were an astounding 9-3! Rather amazing. We even failed to win our Lock of the Week as Dallas continued their recent side by giving up 5 goals at home to the scoring-deprived Islanders! Oh well. We have a chance at redemption next Saturday when another 12 games will be decided.



2) This upcoming week look for a post we did recently updating our popular post we did a few years ago. The All Prick team! Also we believe FR2 is working on a post concerning some under performing, highly paid players in the league right now.
As always, keep it here for all the latest!

Week 9 Picks

1) A new month, and a new chance for me to try to improve what I think is an abysmal record through the first 8 weeks of the NHL season. Thus far I am 57-44, f0r a .564 winning %. Not terrible, but I'd prefer to be above .600. Today/night there are an even dozen games.

Montreal at Los Angeles: Kings

Toronto at Boston: Bruins

Ottawa at Washington: Capitals

Pittsburgh at Carolina: Penguins

New Jersey at Winnipeg: Jets

NY Rangers at Tampa Bay: Lightning

Chicago at St. Louis: Blues

Buffalo at Nashville: Predators

Philadelphia at Phoenix: Coyotes

NY Islanders at Dallas: Stars (Lock of The Week)

Calgary at Edmonton: Flames

Florida at San Jose: Sharks

Coaching Carousel Continues....

1) In a bit of a bizarre move the Anaheim Ducks abruptly fired head coach Randy Carlyle late last night and replaced him with recently fired Bruce Boudreau. The strangest aspects of this move is not that the Ducks fired Carlyle. The Ducks were off to an absolutely awful start to the season as they sat 14th in the Western Conference. However the team seemed to be trending up a bit lately, and the move was made after a sound 4-1 victory over the Canadiens at Honda Center. Its unusual for a team to fire a coach late in the evening, especially immediately after his team wins a game.

2) So why? Our sources tell us that Ducks GM Bob Murray was contemplating a move for the past couple of weeks, but didn't have a suitable replacement lined up. When Boudreau was fired by the Capitals this past Monday morning Murray thought he might have his man. What also added to the swiftness of the move was the fact that Boudreau was a wanted man. As our sources correctly told us Monday, Bruce was already being courted/contacted by 2 other teams. Both of which were 'North of The Border'. One scout tells us that Boudreau was going to have another job by weeks end somewhere". Thus Murray was forced to act fast, else he'd lose his opportunity. We're told that early yesterday afternoon, after receiving the OK to talk to Boudreau from Caps management, (He had another year on his contract) Murray offered the job to Bruce and a verbal deal was made, but too late in the day for Murray to make his move before game time. We're told Bruce threw a few items into a suit case and was en-route to California even before the official announcement was made early this morning (Eastern time)

3) For Boudreau the timing couldn't be better. Like the Capitals whom he took over for Glen Hanlon in 2007, the Ducks should be better than their record indicates. They can't go anywhere but up. When one of your stars like Ryan Getzlaf goes 14 games between goals it can't fall on the coach, but as always, it does/did. We believe the Ducks will have a bit of a resurgence under Gabby(as we believe they would have anyway). As for Carlyle, don't feel sorry for him folks. For one, he signed a 3 year, multi million dollar extension right before the start of the season. More importantly our very accurate sources tell us some of those teams "up north' who were looking at Boudreau will now set their sites on the former Norris winner/Stanley Cup winning coach. "Don't be shocked to see Carlyle coaching by Christmas" is what one Eastern Conference official told Fauxrumors early today. Yes, the coaching carousel goes round and round.....