New NHL Conference Names

The National Hockey League recently announced it would be realigning into two western conferences of 8 teams each and two eastern conferences of 7 teams each. Since then, Twitter has been abuzz with #NHLConferenceNames. Here are my contributions:

• Western Hockey, Central Hockey, Atlantic Hockey, Hockey East -- sorry, those names are already taken


• B. Sutter, B. Sutter, R. Sutter, D. Sutter


• Original 3, Original 2, Original 1, All-Expansion


• Keenan, Demers, Bowman, Brooks


• Red, Blue, White, Rouge


• Democratic, Republican, Libéral, Conservative


• Big 8, Little 8, Big 7, Little 7 -- The Big 7 has eight teams, the Little 8 has seven?


• Athos, Porthos, Aramis, D'Artagnan


• Laurier, Aylmer, Montcalme, Wolfe


• Coastal, Central, Capital, Century -- borrowing from the NFL


• Pacific, Prairie, Penn, Periphery -- Peninsulas may work better than Periphery


• Smith, Jones, Tremblay, Fraser


• Darryl, Daryl, Derrel, Darrell -- none of which attract the attention of my spellchecker


• Zamboni, CCM, Nike, Reebok


• Iñigo Montoya, Fezzik, Westley, Dread Pirate Roberts -- But wasn't Westley the Dread Pirate Roberts? Yes, and so was Iñigo Montoya, after the end of the story.


• Movers, Shakers, Shovers, Makers


• Nordiques, Sioux, Whalers, Rockies -- in honor of teams that are no more (unless the Spirit Lake Sioux win their lawsuit)


• Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy -- Alcott was from New England


• Atlantic, Pacific, Chesapeake, Freshwater


• Numero Uno, Number One, Numéro Un, Number Two


• Norris, Smythe, Patrick, Adams -- Classic names


• CIA, KGB, MI5, Mossad


• Prince of Wales, Duke of Cambridge, Duke of Wessex, Elected American -- this last division would include Washington


• NBC, CBC, TSN, RDS


• LeBlanc, Hnatyshyn, Sauvé, Léger -- the most recent deceased Governors General of Canada