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