As for realignment, one thing they wanted to do was to keep teams playing each other every year in the playoffs. Cam Neely was talking about something like Canes/Bruins from a few years ago, nice 7-game series, some bad blood develops... and then they won't see each other in the postseason until whenever it falls into place. The new layout helps some short term rivalries develop. I guess another important thing for the league was to have teams playing their road games close to their own time zone. For a team like the Blue Jackets or the Preds, you want to develop younger fans and keep them, so the bigger % of road games that people can actually watch, the better.
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