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Is The East A Favorite?
by Paul on 03/22/07 at 08:28 AM ET
Comments (4)
from Spector at his Fox Sports Blog,
This isn’t the first time I’ve read and heard of supposed bias against the NHL’s Western Conference from hockey fans, but a closer examination of the facts suggests otherwise.
First, scheduling in terms of travel is considerably tougher for Western teams, but that’s the result of geography. All the Eastern Conference teams are within one time zone and in many cases a quick one or two hour plane trip apart.
In the West, however, the teams are spread further apart and between three time zones (central, mountain and pacific). It’s unfortunate, but not the result of any bias against them.
more.. plus, don’t forget there are two teams in the West that are in the eastern time zone…
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Comments
This is why I want to have a Northern Conference and a Southern Conference. All the Original Six teams will be intraconference rivals, all the Canadian teams will be intraconference rivals, and even teams like New Jersey and Atlanta will have to drag their hockey behinds out to Vancouver and Los Angeles more than once every three years.
Everyone divides sports leagues along longitudinal lines. Divide along latitudinal lines for once and see how that works. At least fans of the (now) Eastern teams would be sleep deprived by 10:30 pm starts a lot more often! 
Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 03/22/07 at 11:18 AM ET
Drawing conferences upon latitudinal lines would be horrible for TV ratings across the board and raise travel expenses for everyone. Not a realistic possibility.
Posted by Guy Legend on 03/22/07 at 11:58 AM ET
Oh, don’t misunderstand me, I know that kind of realignment will never happen (although I wonder if the marketing push of having all the stars play in all the arenas wouldn’t defray some of the expense—transfer from the marketing budget to the travel budget, if you will—and teams criss-cross the continent in other sports and manage not to fly coach to save money, so I’m curious just how much it would hurt the Eastern teams cf the Western teams). It’s just something that I would like to see, because I would like to see Vancouver play Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal as many times as they play Edmonton and Calgary, and I would like to see Tampa match up against San Jose, and I would like to see more Original Six matchups, and since the travel schedule for the Western teams can’t be improved you might as well hurt the Eastern teams equally to be fair and see how standings are affected then—a bit of an experiment.
Posted by Baroque on 03/22/07 at 08:37 PM ET
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No doubt geography is what its all about.
That will never change, but it would be a little better if one more team was in the West, maybe in Seattle or Portland, that would help a little bit, but not a lot.
Posted by PuckHound61 from Speckville USA on 03/22/07 at 10:57 AM ET