The NHL is changing their ways completely over the next few years, turning two conferences into 4.  There will be two conferences with 7 teams and two with 8 teams.  The Bruins consist of themselves, Canadiens, Panthers, Lightning, Leafs, Sabres, and Senators.  Each of these teams we will play 3 times at home, and 3 times away.  For every other team, we will play them once at home, and once away.  This can be both good and bad:

Good:

• Every team gets to play everyone at least once with home ice advantage.
• There will be less traveling for west coast teams (which doesn’t really matter for us at all)
• Games played in different time zones will be earlier so we won’t have to be up till 1 AM watching us smoke the Canucks and the Sedin sisters again this season
• Only have to play the Caps and Penguins twice

Bad:

• We will only see the Flyers twice, and that is usually one of the best games to watch during the regular season
• It will be confusing as hell once playoff time comes..

Playoffs will consist of 4 teams from each conference going to the tourney (yes math geniuses, that’s 16 teams)  Each conference will play within itself to find a winner.  After that winner is found, the final 4 teams will be determined by total points.  So there is no rhyme or reason telling us which conference we will play until right before it happens.  We could play Vancouver in the semi’s now and play a team right in our back yard like the Islanders or Devils (if they both didn’t suck) in the finals.

It’s all still being voted on but it passed through the league and looks to be the final layout so get used to it.  But until then, Go B’s!