NHL realignment has come -- The Devils have new playdates

The NHL Board of Governors has voted on realignment and now only the players union stands in the way of approval. With the failure of the Atlanta Thrashers franchise, who moved to Winnipeg this year the NHL was 'west heavy' with more teams located in the western areas than the east. The NHL could just have swapped Detroit for Winnipeg moving the Red Wings east but a new and different plan was approved. There will now be four conferences; The Atlantic, the Northeast, the Midwest and the Pacific and they break down like this:

Northeast Conference: Boston, Buffalo, Florida, Montreal, Ottawa, Tampa Bay and Toronto
Atlantic Conference: Devils, Rangers, Islanders, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Carolina and Washington
Midwest Conference: Detroit, Chicago, Dallas, Columbus, Nashville, Winnipeg, St. Louis and Minnesota
Pacific Conference: Anaheim, Calgary, Colorado, Edmonton, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Jose and Vancouver

The top four teams in each new conference would make the playoffs first two rounds of the playoffs would be within your new conference. Word has it that after one team emerges from each conference they would be re-seeded by record and you'd have a final four situation.

It sounds like decades of pointing out they were the only serious playoff contender in the Eastern Time Zone playing on Pacific time pretty regularly in the playoffs from the Red Wings has paid off. Johnny's solution would simply have been to put Winnipeg in Detroit's old spot and move the Wings to Atlanta/Winnipeg's old spot in the Southeast Division but nobody asked him.

So Devils and Rangers and Isles fans, whadda ya think? Workable? Do you hate it? Spit it in comments...