With the NHL welcoming back the Winnipeg Jets to start the 2011-12 season, it has already been concluded that despite geographical abnormalities, Winnipeg will stay in the Southeast Division (where the Atlanta Thrashers played) for one season before the NHL realigns their divisions. It is a foregone conclusion that Winnipeg will move to the Western Conference to start the 2012-13 season, with one Western team jumping ship to the Eastern Conference. Detroit has lobbied to be moved to the Eastern Conference for a number of years, and they have a good case because they are actually in the Eastern Standard Time zone. The other team hoping for a move is the Columbus Blue Jackets, who are also in the EST zone, but because of the history of the Detroit Red Wings, their wishes hold more weight with the league. Unfortunately a Winnipeg-for-Detroit swap does not work for the Southeast Division; potentially if the league chose to move Columbus, though, they could slide into the Southeast Division. But this article assumes Detroit will successfully move to the Eastern Conference, so can anything be done to the Southeast Division and their open spot? The next closest Eastern teams to the Southeast Division clubs geographically are the Pittsburgh Penguins, Philadelphia Flyers and New Jersey Devils. But you cannot move out one of the Pennsylvanian teams and not the other; likewise you cannot have New Jersey in a different division than the two New York teams. Thus, the only logical result has to be eliminate the current divisions and changing the landscape of the NHL, which is not a bad thing at all. Despite a complete lack of skill in Microsoft Paint, I attempted to plot all 30 teams onto a map while still making the image legible (the location of the city is not where the abbreviation is, it is where the line points to on the map). Click here for an image of how I grouped the teams (http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk288/jackdaniels_no7/realignment.jpg). The end result of all of this legwork is the NHL condensing from six divisions to four divisions. Each Conference will have one division of eight teams and one division of seven teams. The Western Conference was more difficult to group together because of the sheer volume of land between the American-based clubs and Canadian-based clubs, but players have to accept that there will be travel involved. While this is not an exact science, it seems like an easy solution if the league chooses to go this route. In this scenario, the Western clubs are separated by their time zone. Pacific Division: Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, San Jose, Los Angeles, Anaheim, Phoenix. Every team in this division is either in Pacific Standard Time or Mountain Standard Time. The only club in either time zone that is not in this division is Colorado (who is in MST), and they could easily be slotted into this division as well, it just depends on where you want to draw the cut-off line on the map. Central Division: Winnipeg, Minnesota, Chicago, Columbus, St. Louis, Nashville, Colorado, Dallas. Each team in this division is in the Central Time Zone except Columbus (EST) and Colorado (MST). Because of their southern location, Dallas was previously paired with the California clubs, but given the two hour difference in their time zones, I felt that was unfair. Again, Colorado could easily slide over to the Pacific without creating a problem with the alignment here. Atlantic Division: NY Rangers, NY Islanders, New Jersey, Washington, Carolina, Tampa Bay, Florida. This was an easy one, as all seven teams are the closest to the Atlantic Ocean. Northeast Division: Boston, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Buffalo, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia. Like the Western Conference, the East has one team that could slide into either division and that is Boston. I fit them into this division because of their historical rivalries with Montreal, Buffalo and Toronto, but they could easily fit geographically into the Atlantic Division, though their lone rivals there are the Rangers. This is not a perfect setup or conclusion to the upcoming realignment in the NHL, but if you look at the map, you should be able to see that it does make sense. It keeps 15 teams in each Conference fighting for eight playoff spots, and keeps almost all teams playing within their own time zones.