I see. But all I suggested that it should be upto 32 teams to have a well-balanced scheduled, not unbalanced, as far as equal-team conferences/divisions go.

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Florida State Seminoles fan for life (mostly on football, basketball and baseball)! 2013 ACC football Atlantic Division champions; 2013 ACC football regular season champions; 2013 ACC football conference bowl tournament champions; 2014 NCAA D-I FBS BCS national champions!

New alignment was approved today

From a Yahoo article
"All teams will play each other both home and away at least once each season. And teams will play division rivals at least four times a season."

For the 8 team divisions that's 22 teams twice for 44 games and the 7 division teams 4 times for 28 games which is 72 games, 10 left
For the 7 team divisions that's 22 teams twice for 44 games and the 6 division teams 4 times for 24 games which is 68 games, 14 left

At 32 it would be
24 teams twice for 48 games and 7 division teams 4 times for 28 games which comes to 76 games, 6 left. I would just make the season 84 games and say you play the other division in your conference one more time.

With that happening, looks like it'll be inevitable. If only the NHL would find 2 more expansions teams (obviously in the West side) to truly balance things.

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Florida State Seminoles fan for life (mostly on football, basketball and baseball)! 2013 ACC football Atlantic Division champions; 2013 ACC football regular season champions; 2013 ACC football conference bowl tournament champions; 2014 NCAA D-I FBS BCS national champions!

Seattle is inevitable. For the other city I'm thinking Kansas City or Milwaukee. They could always put a 2nd team in Toronto and put them in that midwestern division too.

It maybe possible, but in case the league expands to 32 teams, each 8-team division can split into 2 4-team sections within; leading to another schedule structure.

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Florida State Seminoles fan for life (mostly on football, basketball and baseball)! 2013 ACC football Atlantic Division champions; 2013 ACC football regular season champions; 2013 ACC football conference bowl tournament champions; 2014 NCAA D-I FBS BCS national champions!

Geoff Baker (not a guy who's been really warm to issues of the proposed arena being worked in Seattle) attached to a story in the last 10 days about the NHL potentially making an expansion announcement after the now-concluded Olympics in Sochi.

http://seattletimes.com/html/hockey/202 ... 20xml.html

The announcement probably isn't that imminent, as an environmental impact statement draft is due in March. If that is approved and an MOU amended to permit the NHL to catalyze the building (an NBA team is currently required to trigger the agreement), it appears the NHL is ready to expand.

It does appear Seattle can't happen alone. Thing is...

Kansas City has indicated lukewarm interest. I guess there's an owner, but the city is making money off Sprint Center and won't easily give up revenue streams.

Milwaukee- not enough suites in the old building, not really the momentum to use NHL in a new building.

Houston- Les Alexander basically pushed away the AHL Aeros and seems to be blocking any notion of NHL in the arena now.

Portland- after the Coyotes saga was finished, a report came out in The Oregonian that Paul Allen was ready to buy the team, and more boldly, they were the top choice of the NHL. I believe there's a catch... Allen wasn't going to pay top dollar for the Coyotes. Mr. Baker, in an interview in Vancouver this weekend, made a comment about Seattle not really being ready, so the media here is keeping an eye out; that sort of confirmed the O story. It means nothing about expansion... Allen isn't going to pay for it the way Seattle is likely to do, especially if another Baker rumor is correct and Steve Ballmer becomes the lead investor. So, no Portland.

Someone inside the NHL dropped a whisper about Las Vegas. One of the major Vegas casino conglomerates is on the verge of breaking ground on a new facility that "could" host NHL or NBA, behind the New York New York property. Please note that the same conglomerate already runs MGM Grand Garden; so it's a subject of some intrigue. Possibly even more important; even though Vegas is in the Pacific Time Zone, there are so many direct flights from all over that it might make more sense to place them in the Central Division. However, it also makes sense to build this arena for bigger concerts and not necessarily a team.

Quebec is building an arena, has an owner; they're going to be ready. It may well be them.

Hope that the NHL will find the adequate 2 locations available to complete the puzzle for having 32 teams (with each division having 8 teams, and split into 2 4-team pods). That way, EVERYTHING will be fairly balanced, like the scheduling format for example.

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Florida State Seminoles fan for life (mostly on football, basketball and baseball)! 2013 ACC football Atlantic Division champions; 2013 ACC football regular season champions; 2013 ACC football conference bowl tournament champions; 2014 NCAA D-I FBS BCS national champions!

Pods? Try not to collegify everything.

(I'll promise from here on in to not use my English-grad wife's power to invent words without her permission and, perhaps, an environmental impact statement.)

Pounder - Oops, my bad on using the word "pod". But my intention was not to "collegify", it's simply to make scheduling format more fairly and evenly balanced. I'll explain to you eventually on what I mean, so you can get an idea or two.

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Florida State Seminoles fan for life (mostly on football, basketball and baseball)! 2013 ACC football Atlantic Division champions; 2013 ACC football regular season champions; 2013 ACC football conference bowl tournament champions; 2014 NCAA D-I FBS BCS national champions!