Chirps from Center Ice

It was announced today by the AHL that there will be divisional realignment for next season. Every team will be clustered in a five team division, three divisions to a conference.

League press release here.

Wilkes-Barre remains in the East Division but loses Charlotte, Albany and Adirondack. The Checkers move to the Western Conference and the Devils and Phantoms move to the newly titled “Northeast Division.” The Pens divisional opponents remain the Norfolk Admirals, Hershey Bears, Binghamton Senators and Syracuse Crunch.

Bombulie had pre-alignment speculation up over at the Penguins Insider earlier this morning.

Playoff format goes to what the NHL has with the division winners getting the top three seeds then four thru eight based off of points. Round one of the playoffs is a best-of-five and then after that best-of-seven.

Highly speculated but not announced was the elimination of inter-conference opponents. If that is truly the case then you can say bye-bye to playing the Checkers entirely who are now in a division with the Chicago Wolves, Milwaukee Admirals, Peoria Rivermen and Rockford IceHogs. The league will release the schedule matrix later this summer. Scuttlebutt is they want to move to a balanced schedule, which would eliminate playing Western Conference teams entirely.

This alters the Free Agent Watch a bit as we no longer have to worry about what Charlotte, Adirondack and Albany sign. But, it likely means more games against the Bears, Admirals, Senators and Crunch.

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