PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- NHL officials approved a radical realignment plan Monday that will give the league four conferences instead of six divisions and guarantee home-and-home series among all teams.

The Board of Governors authorized commissioner Gary Bettman to implement the proposal pending input from the NHL Players' Association. It could be put in place as early as next season.

The league considered two plans to accommodate Atlanta's move to Winnipeg this past summer. The first would have simply moved the Jets to the Central Division and either Detroit or Columbus to the Southeast.

"The simple one wasn't as simple as it looked when you got done with it," Bettman said.

The board opted to go with the more dramatic switch, creating four geographic conferences -- two with eight teams and two with seven.

The new format will increase overall travel in the regular season, especially for Eastern Conference teams who will now have more trips West. But it cuts down on travel for some Western Conference teams, which was a critical issue for teams such as Detroit, Dallas, Columbus and Nashville.

"More teams are going to have to do more travel. There's things in there that everybody likes to a degree and some they wouldn't like but ultimately it's about compromise," Detroit general manager Ken Holland said. "From the Detroit Red Wings perspective, we like it."

The debate process lasted for roughly an hour. Although no official vote count was released, the changes required at least 20 of the 30 teams to ratify.

"This is not a subject that everybody is going to get their first choice on," Bettman said. "What you try to do is come up with something that everybody can live with, get comfortable with and understands the value of. Because if you ask 30 clubs, you'd probably get 30 different solutions. That's what makes this a difficult process."