It Was Nice Knowing You, Northwest and Southeast Divisions

With the start of Free Agency last Friday it appears that the calendar in the NHL has turned to the 2013-2014 season. It's an exciting time before the first puck drops sometime in October when you have the chance to look at the moves your respective teams has made, over-analyze things, pull your hair out, and ball up into the fetal position until the boys win a game and you tell your friends you knew they would turn things around this year.

One of the things I am particularly interested in witnessing is the NHL's new realignment plan, which will see the NHL keep Western and Eastern Conferences but reduce to two divisions per side. The noteworthy differences between the old and new arrangements involve Detroit and Columbus heading east, Winnipeg, Minnesota, and Dallas landing in a more geographically friendly division, and the three teams in Ottawa and Quebec will be taking more trips to Florida than in the past. But the aspect of this that makes me most happy is that we finally bid adieu to the God-awful Northwest and Southeast Divisions.

The recently deceased alignment plan was implemented for the 1998-99 campaign and while four out of six divisions provided a healthy level of competition for the majority of its duration, the Northwest and Southeast Divisions seemed to be stuck in neutral.

The Northwest Division has until recently comprised of the Calgary Flames, Colorado Avalanche, Edmonton Oilers, Minnesota Wild, and Vancouver Canucks. All teams have had one appearance in the Stanley Cup Final save for the Wild who in 2003 challenged the Anaheim Ducks in the Western Conference Final and were mightily swept. They haven't been past the first round since. Colorado is the only team to come away from the playoffs with Lord Stanley's Chalice, which they won in 2001. Colorado is also the only other team aside from Vancouver to be crowned Division Champions at the end of the regular season more than once and each of their five times happened in the first five consecutive seasons of this alignment plan.

The Northwest Division also has had the privilege of picking first at the NHL Entry Draft for the past four seasons, twice by lottery and twice by virtue of having the worst regular season record. At the other extreme, the Vancouver Canucks won the President's Trophy in both 2011 and 2012 for the best regular season record in the league. These were also seasons in which no other Northwest Division team made the playoffs.

But this touches on something that can best be explained by looking at the Southeast Division over the past few years, and that trend is of mediocre teams succeeding by playing in already bad divisions. For those unaware, this division was comprised of the Carolina Hurricanes, Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Washington Capitals, and Winnipeg Jets/Atlanta Thrashers.

In the season of 2009-10, the Washington Capitals tore the NHL up, amassing a record of 54-15-13 and 121 points over the regular season, good for a President’s Trophy win and eight points ahead of the runner-up. Their divisional record was 19-3-2, which equals out to 40 of a possible 48 points. If you dig a little deeper, the only teams outside the division to actually have losing records to the Southeast that year were the Minnesota Wild (1-2-3), the St. Louis Blues (2-3-1), the New York Islanders (8-9-3), and the Philadelphia Flyers split the decision (10-10-0). Even Atlanta (8-14-2) and Florida (8-13-3) couldn't compete in its own division.

Now the Capitals were actually a very good team that year but if you notice that the closest Southeastern team in the standings was the Atlanta Thrashers with 83 points and a 10^th place finish we start to see a different picture of this collection of squads. Of course the result for this presumed juggernaut is that they would lose in seven games to the eighth seed Montreal Canadiens during the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals.

The next season would see a new tie-breaker in playoff seeding implemented that would prove to foreshadow a problem with the already flawed NHL point system. Seeds would still be determined by points with the division champions gaining the top three spots in the standings. However, should a tie in points occur the first tie-breaker was based on regulation and overtime wins, effectively dropping shootout wins from the totals. In a way this put less emphasis on the absolute win and more on walking away from a contest with a charity point at the very least from a game lasting beyond regulation.

Fast forward to 2011-2012 when the Florida Panthers would take the Southeast Division Champions honor. The Panthers would accrue 94 points in the season with a 38-26-18 record which, in a non-points-based world, looks strangely like a losing record. Only six of their wins would come via shootout but so would 11 of their 18 charity points. For a team in any other division, 94 points would have slotted you in seventh place and 32 regulation and overtime wins would tie you in that category with the ninth place Buffalo Sabres. Want more numbers? Florida was one of only two teams to make the playoffs, the other being the Washington Capitals, with a negative goal differential.

And just to put the cherry on top of how awful this division has been in its existence, in 2013 Carolina, Tampa Bay, and Florida finished 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th, respectively, in the Eastern Conference. Because of the lockout all teams only played within their conferences so this gives an idea as to how these teams have been built to play outside of their division.

All numbers aside, these have been a depressing several years for the game of hockey. Even the teams' announcers have had trouble watching, whether it be Avalanche Radio Network voice Marc Moser (a personal favourite of mine) sounding disinterested and despondent to the Fox Sports Panthers broadcast pair spending on-air time listing fun facts about the host city while in Winnipeg and talking about Slurpees instead of calling the game. The blog Backhand Shelf even has a "Forced Watch Challenge" during the regular season in which a contributor has to watch an undesirable game which often involved Calgary or Carolina.

To be clear, we are not losing these teams from the league all together, just the divisions. But it does look like the ten teams from the Northwest and Southeast are losing the water wings and being thrown in the deep end. With the new alignment, these teams lose the standings cushion from playing weaker competition and have to more regularly play against teams who are actually built to win.

So I say good bye to you, Northwest Division, which should have been gone with its last near-dynasty. And farewell, Southleast, I wish you luck with growing in your non-traditional markets which will be aided by seeing teams who know how to play hockey.