Quote:
Originally Posted by Strange Brew
But Austin to either Calgary or Abbotsford is much further than any of those.
You can also fly direct to Chicago from Austin. No direct commercial flights from Austin to Calgary.
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Sure, but no further than Laval and not much further than Charlotte where they also played last year. The AHL also doesn't care about a perfectly balanced schedule; last season different teams played 68 or 72 or 76 games.
The Texas Stars are covering crazy distance no matter what. Austin played CHI 12 times last year and each of their other divisional opponents 8. They could just keep high frequency with CHI and LA area teams and only need one trip a year to each of the CAD outposts.
Perhaps they just do two western divisions of 8 and 9 teams. Now that they're a 32 team league they could even shorten their season a bit and re-think their playoff format (a 32 team bracket that continues for both winners and losers (at least for another round or two).