NHL fans, particularly Canadian ones, have been clamoring for striping Columbus of their money-losing NHL team for some time. The Blue Jackets have made only one playoff appearance and weren't even able to clinch a victory. The front office and carousel of coaching staff have made some serious blunders that have certainly been detrimental to the franchise but I do not believe they are entirely to blame--alignment has a lot to do with why the Blue Jackets sucked.
The birth of the Blue Jackets ushered in a new era of NHL alignment and were placed in the Western Conference and the Central Division along with Chicago, Detroit, Nashville, and St Louis.
I'll address the Western Division issue first. As one of only two teams in the Eastern time zone playing in the West, travel is a bear. 5 of their conference mates spend hockey season on Pacific time while another 3 are on Mountain time. It's tough to compete when you make lots of long flights and your body has no clue what time it is. It also makes it hard for fans to follow their team when away games go into the early morning hours.
The Central Division is another consternation that I do not think the NHL saw coming. I am sure they did lots of feasibility studies be awarding the city a franchise and saw that a Columbus had a void in pro sports and that the city had an ample supply of educated, upper middle class folks with money to spend and that everything checked out. What those studies couldn't prognosticate would be the intra-division dynamics and how inevitably someone in the Central Division would struggle to be a viable franchise. Chicago and Detroit are both Original Six teams that have a long history of success. Both Columbus and Nashville are young franchises and neither one is in a huge market. St Louis, while having some history, is also a smaller market team. All three of these franchises desperately need to field competitive teams to keep fans interested and paying to see games and buying merchandise. With Detroit and Chicago so entrenched at the top their is a glass ceiling in place for St Louis, Nashville, and Columbus with two of these three destined to be in 4th and 5th place within the division. Furthermore, with the way in which the NHL playoffs are set up, play off berths for these three franchises come at a premium. It should come to no surprise at NHL headquarters that at least one of these teams would be bleeding money and struggling to stay afloat. It just so happens that Nashville and St Louis are on the upswing while Columbus is not.
Why the NHL shouldn't bail on Columbus
The Silver lining to this story is that I believe the Columbus can survive if the NHL implements the 4 Conference Alignment Plan that was released earlier this year but whose acceptance was stalled by the Players' Union, who sought to use it as a bargaining chip. This plan would bring three additional members to the Blue Jackets' division--Dallas, Minnesota, and Winnipeg but four of the eight members would receive playoff berths. This infusion of new teams would create more parity within the conference between the #3 and #8 spot. Movement in the conference should be far my fluid and it will be unlikely that the Blue Jackets, or any team for that matter, remain perennial cellar dwellers. This would also do away with all of those long flights to the west coast. So please NHL, pass the new alignment plan and save the Blue Jackets.
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