The relocation of the former Atlanta Thrashers franchise to become the current Winnipeg Jets in 2011 prompted the league to discuss realignment. On December 5, 2011, the NHL Board of Governors approved a conference realignment plan that would eliminate the current six-division setup and move into a four-conference structure.[86] Under the plan, which was designed to better accommodate the effects of time zone differences, each team would have played 36 or 38 intra-conference games, depending on whether it is in a seven- or eight-team conference, and two games (home and road) against each non-conference team. On January 6, 2012, the league announced that the NHL Player's Association had rejected the proposed realignment, citing concerns about fairness, travel and the inability to see a draft schedule before approving, and that as a result, it would not implement the realignment until at least 2013–14.[87][88]

Upon NHLPA rejection of the previous realignment, a new joint NHL-NHLPA plan was proposed in February 2013 as a modification of the previous plan with both the Columbus Blue Jackets and Detroit Red Wings moving to the East and the Winnipeg Jets moving to the West. This revised plan also adjusted the previously proposed four-conference system to a four-division, two-conference system, with the Eastern Conference consisting of two, eight-team divisions, and the Western Conference consisting of two, seven-team divisions. A new playoff format was also introduced to accommodate the new proposal, with the top three teams in each division making the playoffs, along with two wild-cards in each conference (for a total of 16 playoff teams).[89] The NHLPA officially gave its consent to the NHL's proposed realignment plan on March 7,[90] and then the NHL's Board of Governors approved the realignment and the new playoff format on March 14, to be implemented prior to the 2013-2014 season.[91] The league then announced the new names of the divisions on July 19: the two, eight-team divisions in the Eastern Conference will be the Atlantic Division and the Metropolitan Division, and the two, seven-team divisions the Western Conference will be Central Division and the Pacific Division.[92]
List of teams
North American experiments

The North American Soccer League in the 1970s and then Major League Soccer in the 1990s experimented with a variation of the shoot-out procedure.

Instead of a straight penalty kick, the shoot-out started 35 yards from the goal and having five seconds to attempt a shot. The player could make as many moves as he could in a breakaway situation in the five seconds, then attempt a shot. This procedure is similar to that used in an ice hockey penalty shot. As with a standard shoot-out, this variation used a best-of-five-kicks model, and if the score was still level, the tiebreaker would head to an extra round of one attempt per team.