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I didn’t really expect much in the way of news coming out of the NHL General Managers’ Meeting yesterday in Toronto. It was more of a get-acquainted session for some of the new arrivals like Paul Holmgren and Garth Snow. My hope is that discussion over much-need schedule changes is re-visited sooner than later.

I’ve listened to all the so-called experts and haven’t really heard any feasible solution to the scheduling inequities. I recognize that the NHL faces several dilemmas –- 30 teams spread out over the North American time zones and 82 games to work with.

There are three changes I would like to make that could dramatically improve the NHL model:

• I would like to see the schedule reduced to 80 Games and start the season at least one week earlier - just to spread things out a bit.

The reality of professional hockey is it’s a 12-month season. The regular season takes up 6 months, the playoffs - 2 months and the remaining 4 months are spent healing injuries and conditioning for the next season. Players don’t show up for “training camp” out of shape. It just doesn’t happen anymore. Starting the regular season in late September and lopping off even a couple of game would enable at least some opportunity to spread the games out.

• Finally, if you have a look at the NHL Playoff format, what jumps out at you is how it is structured on both a Division and Conference basis. Each of the top teams in each Division is automatically seeded 1, 2 and 3 for playoff purposes. The remaining 5 playoff spots belong to the next 5 teams based on Conference Standings.

Under the current schedule, each team plays their divisional opponents 8 times – a whopping 40% of the season! Conversely, teams play Conference rivals only 4 times. If a team is in a weak division, playing 8 games against each other can offer a sizeable advantage over teams battling it out against stronger divisional opponents. For example, would you rather be Montreal playing 8 games each against Buffalo, Toronto, Ottawa and Boston, or Pittsburgh playing 8 games each against Philadelphia, the New York Islanders, New Jersey and the New York Rangers?

It would be far more equitable and make more sense to play 5 games against each team in your Conference – then we would have a true picture of the best teams. And this would still leave 12 dates (or 10 in my NHL world) for games outside the Conference.

I heard Bob Gainey remark that he would like to see the current system continue for a couple more years to give the Division rivalries a chance to gel. If division opponents played each other only 5 times instead of 8 each season, the rivalry would intensify because the games would have more meaning, not less. We would also have a clear winner in each 5-game series. At the same time, it would raise the profile of the Conference games creating additional rivalries. It’s a long season and strong, meaningful rivalries between 15 teams would create far more interest to the regular season match-ups.

No major increase in travel, but far more interest for the fans! Yes, Mr. Bettman, the fans. You remember the fans, don’t you?

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