Darren Mak's blog

Last December when the NHL Board of Governors proposed NHL realignment which would have seen the Winnipeg Jets move out of the Southeast Division (among others), and into a conference with teams in the Central Time Zone, I questioned how the changes would effect the playoff picture. The NHLPA didn't agree to the changes, so they are not going into effect for the 2012-2013 season as the NHL had planned, but I would assume that something similar will be brought forward during this off season as part of the Collective Bargaining process.

Now that the 2011-2012 regular season is over, I thought I would go back to the proposed conferences and take a look at how the playoff picture would have looked had the changes been in effect this year.

Before you start to say, "but the teams would have been playing different teams more or less often during the regular season, so your not comparing apples to apples..." I know. I could do a little more analysis, and look back over the past couple of years to see how each team faired against the others to get a more accurate guesstimation of how this season might have really ended up, but that is not my intention here.

My intention is to look to see how the playoff picture might have been different, and to see if going from 15 team conferences to 7/8 teams would see a significant change.

My second impression of the W London is rather quick! After heading to the Living Room (Lobby Lounge) for a coffee while my room was cleaned, I was given a code for the wifi, so I could get caught up on some emails etc while I waited. After about 5 minutes of surfing around, checking out SIM cards in the UK, the Tube Map and other things I should have done before I left on this trip, I realized, that the Internet Connection I had was not your typical slow hotel connection.

Running a quick speedtest, I discovered that the download speed averaged just shy of 25 Mega bits per second, but even more impressive was the upload speeds of over 8 Mbps. Wow!

Now I had another problem, I got everything I needed to do done before my room was ready! I guess there can be problems with having a really quick Internet connection for your guests!

For my first impression, come back to check out my hotel review of the new W London which will be up shortly!