While the National Hockey League's board of governors decided not to change their schedule or playoff format on Tuesday, they came awfully close to doing so, according to one league source.
The governors fell one vote short of the required two-thirds majority on a motion to drop two of the eight games against teams in the same division in order to create 18 games against teams in the opposite conference. When only 19 of the 30 governors voted in favour of the move, the NHL decided to maintain the status quo.
But some of those in attendance believe the issue will be revisited in mid-January when the governors meet at the NHL all-star game in Dallas. Toronto Maple Leafs general manager John Ferguson, a strong proponent for the change, is hopeful the move could come as early as next season.
"I don't think we've heard the last of it," Ferguson said after the two-day meetings wrapped up Tuesday. "There was a great deal of sentiment, a great deal of discussion, and while the required votes didn't land on any one particular schedule matrix, the prevailing sentiment was that change was good.
"What exactly that means still remains to be determined but it will be continually discussed. I would not be surprised if something happened. I would think next year is still on the radar."
The problem was not that not enough governors wanted a change, it was that they could not agree on what change to the schedule was the best.
They also decided not to adopt an NCAA-style bracket format for the playoffs, which was a setback for NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who pushed hard for it. But very few governors turned out to be in favour.
Bettman wanted the measure for television, because in a bracket format, the playoff matchups are determined at the start of the post-season. At present, the teams are seeded one through eight in each conference with the first-place team playing the eigth-place team and so on. Then after each round the teams are re-seeded with the highest-ranked survivor playing the lowest-ranked.
"The feeling is that if a team has the benefit of a certain spot, from their regular-season finish, they want the benefit of playing the weakest opponent that gives them," said Brian Burke, president and GM of the Anaheim Ducks. "And bracketing takes that away in the second round."
Burke was also opposed to any change in the regular-season schedule, mainly because his team travels more than most because it is based on the West Coast.
"It's not an easy issue," Burke said. "You can say that the fans want to see more non-conference opponents. But for a West Coast team, my club travels too much right now. It's not that simple to say that's something our fans want so let's just do it.
"There was no resolution as far as changing the schedule was reached mainly because we couldn't agree on something that made more sense than what we had. We want to listen to our fans but it has to make sense, too."
Burke thinks much of the talk about increasing games between teams in the Eastern and Western Conferences is because young stars like Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby play few games in the west.
"Everybody says, 'We want to see Crosby and we want to see Ovechkin,' " Burke said. "I've got news for you. Historically, in all my years running teams, there's only been a couple of players where fans would call and say, `Is this guy playing?'
"I remember when I was assistant GM in Vancouver, Mario Lemieux had a bad back, and fans were calling the switchboard to see if he was going to play so they can decide whether or not to buy tickets. They did the same when Gretzky had injuries. It's never happened with any other player. People pay to watch teams. I think divisional rivalries are important. The fact that we have an aberration with two exciting young players right now, I'm not going to vote to change the schedule dramatically because we have two good players. They could get traded tomorrow. Then what do you do? It's got to have more sense to it than that."
