Finally, Some Valid Points

Vancouver Canucks' general manager Dave Nonis put forth one heck of a rant about free agency and the state of the league schedule today.

Read all about it here:
Nonis on the Warpath

It does nobody good if the fresh young talent the league is dependent upon to boost interest and attendance throughout the league play the free-agency merry-go-round at age 25. In Crosby's case, he'll luck out by giving the Penguins (Pittsburgh/KC/Hamilton?) seven years before the magic date. Kids coming out of junior get a shorter span, and those coming into the NHL with college degrees really get the shaft. Secretly, this is the other intended consequence of King Bettman's plan to keep the small markets just as competitive with the big ones. Hypothetically, if Ovechkin decides to leave Washington at his (and the Caps') peak, voila! - there's bound to be a Nashville, Columbus, Calgary, or St. Louis who just so happens to have some room under the cap, ready to accept the next blue-chip guy to boost their profile. Thus, there's always constant marginal shift between teams, without the devastation of several teams having to do a firesale at the expense of the top playoff-bound teams. This plan means that 20-22 teams remain competitive consistently, always vying for the final 16 playoff spots. Does it work? It seemed to last year, but long-term effects can only be measured four, five years down the line. Eventually, enough players and GM's will get sick of having to retool their roster every three years, or get sick of retooling but finding out their group of players suddenly go from certified postseason to struggling through Game 82.

On the scheduling, I can only guess that Nonis started to suffer from lack of oxygen to the brain during his diatribe. There's no bleeping way Western teams fly as much as ever without going to the Central or Eastern time zones like they used to. In fact, the league specifically returned to the "two-games, one-city" plan they used to ease Winnipeg's travels in the Smythe division in the 1980's, to lessen whatever travel burden there is when you play your division rivals eight times a season. I wonder, are there any MIT or CalTech grads who read this who can explain to me how NOT traveling 6,000 miles round trip from Vancouver to New York and points East at least once a year means more flying and more travel? Make sure to show your work.

Anyway, he is totally correct on the schedule plan as it exists. I've been ranting and raving over the numerous things wrong with it ever since the plan was announced. A little background: When the Owners/League offered a compromise to the Players in '05, the deal that was struck was, in exchange for the 24 percent rollback on all salaries, players (who constantly bitched in the late 90's about having to go East or West from opposite ends of the continent) got the wish for a schedule that concentrated their travel better. Thus, the league invented the eight divisional games and four games against conference rivals. What suffered is the opposite conference plan, which only allows one game each on a rotating home-away plan in alternating years, and omits one whole division each year. Again, I suspect that Bettman's not-so-secret plan was to get as many Atlantic Division games on NBC and Versus, since the league offices are in New York. It just so happened to work in his favor that the three best hopes for the future (Crosby, Malkin, Ovechkin) are in the East as well. It is positively counter-intuitive, if the plan was to keep all 30 teams in the league, not to showcase each team's talent in all other arenas. I'd gladly take more Washington-Calgary (Ovechkin-Phaneuf) and Pittsburgh-Columbus (Crosby-Nash) games or Dallas-Philly games (Lindros saga) in exchange for dropping one conference game per team per year.

The best way I can figure, is to keep the 8 games in the division (32), but cut the conference games down to three per team (30). The remaining 20 games is tough to divide with 15 teams, but it can be done better. How about one opposite conference division gets two games (one home, one road) and the other two alternate home and road among their teams. This way, every team plays every other team at least once, and the opposite conference plan can be rotated so that every three years, one division gets to play another twice, and the other two once each. The optimal plan may be to cut down inter-division games to 22 (2 teams 5 times, 2 teams 6), conference games to 3 per team (30), and play every opposite conference team twice (30,for 82 total). I'm not a fan of that, since you play more conference games than division games, and more opposite conference games than even division ones. It also creates the most problems and mileage with travel, and if our boys are playing with 24 percent less pay, how can we expect them to tolerate long flights?