It has long been anticipated that the NHL would need to realign its divisions for the 2021 hockey season. Continuing complications caused by the COVID-19 pandemic mean that the United States/Canada border remains closed, preventing Canadian teams from coming to the United States for regular season games and vice versa. Therefore it was expected that the NHL would split into four new temporary divisions for the upcoming season: one all-Canadian division plus three divisions dividing the US teams. We now have a better idea of what those US divisions are expected to look like:
Not finalized yet, and still subject to change, but the 2020-21 four-division re-alignment currently looks like this according to sources:
Bos-Buf-NJ-NYI-NYR-Pha-Pgh-Was
Car-CBJ-Det-Chi-Fla-Min-Nas-TB
Ana-Ari-Col-Dal-LA-SJ-STL-VGK
All-Canadian teams— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) December 9, 2020As TSN’s Pierre LeBrun points out in his tweet, this alignment is not finalized just yet.