A little more than a year ago NHL realignment was an intriguing and exciting topic.

Now? Meh.

The announcement that the NHL Players Association has signed off on the NHL’s new plan for at least two seasons was greeted, let’s face it, by a collective yawn.

Not sure why, exactly. Perhaps we’re all just a little weary and a little wary of hockey bureaucracy and negotiations between the league and union after the ugliness and pointlessness of the 113-day lockout.

Offering up congratulations now for the brilliance of re-jigging six divisions into four without having to shut down the sport just doesn’t seem like something folks are prepared to do.

Here in the Great White North, figuring out why we can’t beat Italy at baseball might create more debate. At least for a day.

It’s hard to take a league-wide perspective on realignment — is it good for the game? — since there are a lot of moving pieces and it’s really very much a team-by-team issue, with some benefitting a great deal, some not at all and some losing just a little bit.

The teams that needed to be moved got moved. Sure, there are an uneven number of teams in the conferences, but appearances aside, so what? As Mark Spector of Sportsnet.ca notes, the slightly greater chance of making the post-season in the seven-team western division doesn’t even come close to off-setting the enormous imbalance in travel those western teams have had to deal with for years and will still deal with under this plan.

Surely Winnipeg is at the top of the list of very pleased teams, as their brief exile in the Southeast Division is over. The only benefit for the Jets was that in the NHL’s worst division they actually have a shot at the division crown, quite possibly the only way a Southeast team will earn a playoff berth this season.

Even then, the Jets now move to a division in which they have little or no history with any of the teams, and no Canadian divisional rivals. Not perfect for the former Thrashers, but better.

The most significant move from west to east is, of course, Detroit, and this is an enormous victory for both the Wings and three other Original Six clubs. Detroit has patiently waited more than a decade to follow Toronto in a move to the east for a chance to get out of both the intense travel of the west and gain a preferable TV schedule for both the regular season and playoffs.

The Wings remain one of the league’s marquee teams, so putting them alongside Montreal, Boston and Toronto is, particularly for those with a historical bent, just terrific. Ottawa and Buffalo fit nicely, and nobody really cares where the two Florida teams go as long as there are winter road trips to Sunrise and Tampa.

It’s the best, most interesting division, at least from a Toronto perspective, and it has Steven Stamkos. Remember 15 years ago when the Leafs were in the same division as the Coyotes, Blues and Stars? This is miles better than that.

The long-term benefits of any realignment should be to enhance divisional rivalries, and given that they already exist to a substantial degree in this group, this should work beautifully.

Hard to say whether this will be the NHL’s best division. That will change over time. But from a southern Ontario perspective with an eye on hockey history, the only possible addition that would make this group even better would have been Chicago. And you can’t have everything in a league fighting the geographic challenges this league has.

As it is, Torontonians will love rekindling a rivalry with Detroit, a convenient, 4 1/2hour straight shot down the 401. It produced intensity during the Norris Division years and a memorable playoff series back in 1993 when the Wings dynasty was just getting rolling.

Getting that fire roaring again shouldn’t take long.

The fact that the league and players were able to get this untangled in relatively short order just might be a positive sign that fighting for the sake of fighting is in the past.

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The union had some of its travel concerns addressed, and the wild card for playoff purposes wasn’t part of the previous proposals and was something the players wanted.

So this comes with a whiff of compromise.

That’s not enough to make this package sexy, but it’s a good thing.