(The Player is an active member of a National Hockey League team. Anonymous by choice, he will provide insights about life in hockey on occasion throughout the season.)

"It is unfortunate that the NHLPA has unreasonably refused to support a Plan that an overwhelming majority of our Clubs voted to support, and that has received such widespread support from our fans and other members of the hockey community, including players."

That was Bill Daly, Gary Bettman's right hand man at the NHL and the "Plan" to which the Deputy Commissioner referred was, of course, realignment. The League had given the Players Association a deadline of Jan. 3 to either consent to the Plan or to reject it.

As everyone now knows, the PA shot it down.

In December, the League's Board of Governors approved a realignment proposal that would create four new "conferences." The two eastern-based conferences would each consist of 7 teams while the western and central-based conferences would be home to 8 teams.

Along with the re-shuffling of the teams, there were to be two major changes taking place next season. The first concerned qualification for the playoffs. The proposal called for the top four teams in each of the new conferences to make the playoffs.

The second had to do with scheduling. In a departure from the current format, each team would play home and home with every other team in the league outside of their own conference. The balance of their schedule would be made up of intra-conference games.

The initial reaction from around the hockey world seemed to be positive. With the exception of the two Florida teams joining the current Northeast Division, the conferences made sense geographically. In simple terms, there were to be two Eastern conferences, one Central time-zone conference (plus Detroit and Columbus,) and one conference of Mountain and Pacific time-zone teams.

The fans, and probably some players, liked the idea that each team would visit every road city at least once.

The playoff format promised to intensify some rivalries by setting up intra-conference match-ups in the first two rounds. Bettman was all smiles at the press conference when he announced the proposal and word leaked out that it had been approved by the Board of Governors by a vote of 26-4.

One could only assume, as I did, that a majority of the clubs liked the idea and that at least some of the teams with the biggest concerns going into the meeting (Detroit, Columbus, Dallas, Minnesota and Winnipeg) were satisfied.

But there was no mention of, and relatively little media focus on how much more difficult it would be to make the playoffs for a team in an eight-team conference versus a team in a seven-team conference. And with regard to any potential increase in travel, League officials made some vague statements about how they were confident the schedule could be made to be more efficient.

At this point the proposal was put to the NHLPA. We could either say "yes" or "no" but we could not, according to the CBA, "unreasonably" withhold our consent. As a group the players had two main concerns — the competitive disadvantage of the teams in the eight-team conferences, and the effect that the new schedule would have on travel.

With that in mind we set out to have some questions answered by the League office.

Would they be willing to discuss any changes to the playoff format? It's pretty obvious that the "Plan" wouldn't be fair for the Eastern and Central teams. It wouldn't be fair to those players. Nor would it be fair, for that matter, to the fans of those teams, nor to the owners of those teams (who would have a 7-percent less chance of cashing in on playoff revenue each season).

Would Bettman and the owners be willing to consider some sort of wild card scenario to make the chances of playoff qualification more equitable for all the teams?

Gary's answer was clear. He was not willing to discuss different recommendations because he was not interested in our opinions. This was not a negotiation. All he wanted from the union was a yes or a no.

How would the new schedule effect player travel? Logic suggests that the travel would get a little tougher with every Western Conference team visiting every Eastern Conference city and vice versa.

Story continues