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With the border between the United States and Canada closed indefinitely, the NHL will have to temporarily realign the divisions for the 2020-21 season. Teams will almost certainly have to play interdivisional games at least the entire regular season. According to The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun, here are what the divisions currently look like:
Not finalized yet, and still subject to change, but the 2020-21 four-division re-alignment currently looks like this according to sources:
Bos-Buf-NJ-NYI-NYR-Pha-Pgh-Was
Car-CBJ-Det-Chi-Fla-Min-Nas-TB
Ana-Ari-Col-Dal-LA-SJ-STL-VGK
All-Canadian teams
— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) December 9, 2020
It appears that each team will play 56 games during the regular season, which would mean each team playing others in their division eight times.
The Washington Capitals went 11-10-2 against opponents in their division for this season in 2019-20, which would equate to a 27-24-5 record in a 56-game season. But of course, each team has made changes over the offseason and this season will be different.
The NHL and NHLPA are targeting to start the regular season on Wednesday, January 13 open training camps on Friday, January 1. The seven teams (Buffalo Sabres, New Jersey Devils, Anaheim Ducks, Los Angeles Kings, San Jose Sharks, Ottawa Senators, and Detroit Red Wings) that did not participate in the NHL’s return-to-play plan over the summer are expected to be allowed to open training camps on December 28.
The NHL has expressed the main goal is to return to a normal season in 2021-22 when the Seattle Kraken (the 32nd franchise) are set to debut.
By Harrison Brown
Definitely a different proposal than what Greg Wyshynski talked about. His earlier one had Anaheim, San Jose, LA, Vegas, Phoenix, Colorado, Minnesota, and Dallas in the West. Bruins, Sabres, Isle, Rangers, Devils, Flyers, Caps and Carolina in East. And everyone else in Central, to include TB, Florida, St Louis, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, Nashville, Columbus. Of that earlier proposal, I concurred with the West. And would have traded Boston/Buffalo for Tampa/Florida. I figure Columbus and Pittsburgh should be together. They seem like a natural geographic rivalry even though Pitt has its Metro Rivals (Philly and Washington). The new Central proposal isn’t a very exciting Central Division, if you ask me.
I never thought ESPN’s was right. They had the Pens in another division than Capitals, which would mean 0 Caps-Pens games. That would never happen. The league still looks at those games as marquis, and NBC still makes too much money on those games.
Marquee?
Realignment can be tough especially when there are quite a few teams that are geographically close to the Caps — as in every current Metro team other than Columbus. Pitt and Wash is certainly a huge, marquee rival at the present time. Under normal circumstances (okay this year isn’t normal), they’d want to develop a rivalry between Pitt and Columbus, fueled by college and pro football rivalries between those two states. Normally, if just doing geography, I’d want Wash with Philly and Carolina, although the mileage is roughly similar from Raleigh to either Pittsburgh or NY. The worst realignment is St Louis who is stuck going out West and away from ALL their traditional rivals since Minnesota didn’t want to go west. (But apparently the Blues’ broadcast team wanted to do the West.)